


CHRISTIANITY 



AND 



MODERN INFIDELITY 



CHRISTIANITY 



AND 



MODERN INFIDELITY, 



THEIR 



RELATIVE INTELLECTUAL CLAIMS 
COMPARED. 

BY THE 

KEY. R. W. MOEGAN, 

PEKPETIAL CURATE OF TREGYNON, MONTGOMERYSHIRE, AUTHOR OJ 

"the verities of the church," "vindication OF 

THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND," ETC., ETC. 




PREPARED FOR THE AMERICAN EDITION. 



NEW YORK: 
D.WIEL DAXA. -Ii:., ;J81 IJROADWAY. 





y 






Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1859, 

By DANIEL DANA. Jr., 

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for tiie Souiherii 
District of New York. 



PREFACE 



The following work contains the substance of cer- 
tain conversations between a person of property and 
position professing Infidel principles and the author, 
on the relative intellectual merits of Christianity and 
modern Infidelity. 

The larger number of works published in vindica- 
tion of Christianity labor under one of two defects. 

The first is, the Christianity they defend is not de- 
fined. The reader not being put in possession of the 
specific data of the question at issue, rises after their 
perusal as ignorant as ever of what Christianity is, 
or of what constitutes Infidelity. This vagueness 
and uncertainty takes away from the sectarian works 
on this subject, which have fallen under the author's 
observation, all value as defences of Christianity. 

Tlie second is found in those publications which, 
assuming to defend Christianity against aggression 
or corruption from one quarter, rely upon arguments 



VI PREFACE. 

which are retorted upon it with deadly effect from 
opposite but not less dangerous antagonisms. The 
ultra-Protestant controversialist, whose mind or lim- 
ited sphere of view incapacitates him from taking in 
the whole bearings of the subject, habitually urges, 
as he thinks against Eome, arguments of a nature 
to subvert, not Rome, but Christianity and the 
Scriptures themselves. Works of this description, 
indiscriminately destructive of both the substance 
and corrupt additions of Christianity, teem from the 
press and supply the unbelieving with some of their 
most specious objections, especially against the Scrip- 
tures. 

It is observable, also, that in many of these works 
the points selected for vindication bear so slightly, 
or not at all, on the doubts of gravest import in the 
minds of unbelievers, that, by appearing to ignore 
the real difficulties of the subject, the writers rather 
confirm than confute the Infidelity they combat. 

The Author, in attempting to avoid these errors, 
may possibly have fallen into the commission of 
others not less grave. He has, however, done his 
best to keep himself clear of such an imputation ; 
wdiether successfully or not must be left to the judg- 
ment of his reader. 

The Orthodox Faith vindicated in tliis work is 
stiictly that of the Anglo-Catholic Church of England, 



PREFACE. Vll 

as defined by the Standard common to herself and 
the whole of Catholic Christendom. 

The Author feels that unless we can demonstrate 
that Infidelity, with all the intellect it can command, 
has no chance, on an appeal to sense and reason, of 
standing its ground against Christianity, we must 
either confess it as rational to be Infidels as Chris- 
tians, or we must accept that form of Christianity 
which insists on the entire surrender of our reason 
to the fiat of its own authority. It is in this latter 
position that the Church of Rome, through the 
medium of certain of her most eminent theologians, 
is desirous to place every Christian not within her 
own pale. She would persuade us that as a rational 
system Christianity is not maintainable; that we 
have no alternative than to be Infidels if we follow 
Reason, or members of her community if we follow 
Faith. As a protest against so unseemly an assump- 
tion, as well as in the hope of calling back attention 
from petty religious differences to those great doc- 
trines of Christ, which, before Rome had added a 
single figment of her own to the Catholic Faith, 
overthrew the organized Infidelity of the ancient 
heathen world, these papers are respectfully submit- 
ted to the consideration of the public. 

As the principles of Infidelity are unfortunately 
not confined to any one class of society, the coinpo&i- 



Vlll PREFACE 

tion has been made as plain, and the diction as little 
technical, as the nature of the subjects under discus- 
sion admitted. The purport of the work will be well 
answered if it convinces even a single mind, among 
either rich or poor, of the utter falsehood and hol- 
lowness of that system of '^ swelling words" which, as 
Modern Unbelief, presumes to impeach the Divine 
origin of the religion of Christ, and substitue a claim 
of its own to the allegiance of educated and enlight- 
ened intellect. 

BoGNOE, August 26, 1854, 



CHRISTIiNlTY 



AND 



MODERN INFIDELITY. 



CHRISTIAN. INFIDEL. 

INFIDEL. 

I HAVE, you see, surrounded myself with the pro- 
ductions of those able minds which, with myself, 
reject intellectual allegiance to Christianity — Strauss, 
Fichte, Martineau, Carlyle, Froude, Emerson, Par- 
ker, Hennell, Newman, and others, who, though not 
all on the same grounds, concur in the conclusion 
that the Scriptures are not inspired, nor the religion 
of the Scriptures to be accepted as of divine origin 
and force. This opinion constitutes what you, as 
a Christian, term infidelity. The question at issue 
between us is. Which of these two. Infidelity or 
Christianity — pure reason, or intellect, being judge — 
is the truth of God, of nature, and of the soul ? In 
what order shall we conduct our discussion ? 

Christian. In any way most satisfactory to your 
own judgment. 

Inf. I propose, then, first to examine the validity 
or nullity of such objections against Christianity 



55 SUBJKaOT ov dkcate. 

as, advanced by others, have produced the deepest 
impression on my own mind. Secondly, that we 
investigate such of the main doctrines of Christianity 
as in the greatest degree shock and offend my intel- 
lect. And lastly, that we confront the principal 
features of Christianity w4th those of Infidelity, and 
pronounce which of the two best entitles itself to the 
verdict of sense and reason. 

Chr. I doubt the feasibility, in a discussion of this 
nature, of observing such order, without constantly 
fusing these three considerations in one and the same 
examination of a subject. We will, however, as well 
as we may, adhere to it generally. 

Inf. I then, being an infidel, am to consider my- 
self at liberty to use arguments of every fair and 
honorable description, and from every armory, against 
the religion you profess, without being chargeable 
with the remotest intention of wounding your feel- 
ings, or paining the conscientious sensibilities of your 
co-religionists. 

Chr. Certainly — it is a passage of arms in the 
court of reason. 

Inf. I may assault you thus in front, flank, or 
rear, with weapons and engines of contrary species 
and effect. The victory, if gained, must be acknowl- 
edged as such by the defeated party, be it effected 
by one, or any, or all united, of these hostile 
appliances. 

Chr. Agreed. 

Inf. Then again, I being infidel — that is, no 
believer in Christianity — may combat under any 
standard I please, provided it be not Christian ; for 



SUBJI'CT OF DEBATE. 6 

all standards not Christian are infidel. You, on the 
other hand, being not only Christian, but a Christian 
of a certain Church, must hoist the flag of that Church 
only. You must not assume at one moment the 
uniform and password of the Church of England, 
then in repelling an attack the Church of England is 
impotent to sustain, adopt the arms and cry of Eome ; 
or, vice versd^ when mere Protestantism breaks down, 
throw yourself on Church principles ; or, when Church 
principles explode, save yourself by flight behind the 
platitudes of Protestantism. Nor in your advocacy 
of Christianity must you, to serve diff^erent designs, 
propose it to me — now in the character of a Catholic, 
then of a Presbyterian, presently of a spiritual phi- 
lanthropist — nor still less sink and ignore to-day, 
against an external foe, the very doctrines you chiefly 
allege and depend upon for successful resistance to- 
morrow, on diff'erent grounds, against an internal 
seceder or Nonconformist. 

Chr. I concede all this. 

Inf. It is fair you should. For if I hear an indi- 
vidual on one occasion at Exeter Hall, in some mis- 
sionary meeting, describing Christianity as '' covering 
the earth as the waters do the sea," and drawing all 
nations, kindred, and languages in the train of its 
triumphs, to suit his special convenience then — and 
I hear the same individual on another occasion, for 
some other convenience, proclaim the Church of 
Christ to be still, in the nineteenth century, only '' a 
little and despised flock," I can only suppose such a 
person to be void of either sense or principle, or such 
Christianity to be not worth confutation. But this 



SUBJECT OF DEBATE. 



expedient is, I regret to observe, a common trick 
with your orators and writers. They play fast and 
loose with their religion in such a way, that it wonld 
baffle the most patient inquirer to discover what their 
religion is. Thus, if I address a Protestant, ''Sir, 
the great principle of Protestantism is, that every 
person should have the right of interpreting the 
Scriptures according to his or her private judgment," 
he will warmly assent, and add, that " such religious 
liberty is the most glorious privilege of Englishmen." 
If I proceed to exercise my Protestant right, " my 
glorious privilege," by interpreting certain portions 
of these Scriptures in a sense opposed to his own, I 
find him a very Proteus — he is no longer a Protes- 
tant, but a bigoted sectarian, intolerant of all other 
interpretations than his own ; or a rigid, intractable 
High Churchman, commanding me to bow my re- 
bellious neck to the authority of the j)ublic judg- 
ment of the Church. You will understand that infi- 
delity may converse with such persons, but to reason 
with them, seeing they are their own contradictories 
and the refutations of their own principles, would 
be entirely supererogatory. Now what banner of 
Christianity do you raise, and under which alone do 
you engage in these lists against the shock of infi- 
delity ? 

Chr. The banner of the Church of England. 

LsTF. Yes. But again. High Church or Low 
Church? 

Chr. Is the Church the priesthood, or is it the 
priesthood and people united ? 

Inf. The priesthood and people in one body. 



PRELIMINARY INQUIRY. O 

Chr. Then the banner of the Chnrch of England, 
as a Church, must be one to whose inscription and 
motto, clergy and laity are alike sworn ? 

Inf. Clearly. 

Chr. The banner of the Church of England, then, 
under which I am content to come into collision with 
infidelity, is that of " The Scriptures and the three 
Creeds — the Apostles', the Nicene, and the Atha- 
nasian." 

Inf. Let our preliminary discussion be confined 
then to this point. But why do you select the 
Scriptures and the three Creeds, and not the Ar- 
ticles, for the standard of the Church of England ? 

Chr. Because, as you affirmed, not the clergy 
alone, but the clergy and laity, as one indivisible 
body, constitute the Church ; the Articles, binding 
the clergy alone, cannot be such standard — the 
Scriptures, and the three Creeds professed in public 
liturgy by the mouths of both clergy and laity, thus 
binding both, must, of the whole Church, be the one 
common standard — and this is the standard I elevate 
against you. 

Inf. Solely because it is the standard of your 
Church ? For no other reason ? 

Chr. It is the standard of the Church of England, 
because it is the standard of the orthodox faith of 
Christ and Christendom. By it the Church of Eng- 
land is part integral of that Catholic Apostolical 
Church, which in all ages has been the trustee and 
depository of the orthodox faith. Whether, there- 
fore, you consider and deal with it as the criterion of 
the orthodox faith in Christendom at large, or in 



6 PKiaJMINAKY INQUIRY. 

England in particular, is immaterial. The banner is 
one and the same. 

Inf. Here, then, onr outposts must begin the 
battle. You use the term Orthodox Faith. What 
is this Orthodox Faith ? 

Chr. Cannot you define it ? 

Inf. I — an infidel ? 

Che. It appears to me that an infidel ought to be 
able most accurately to define the propositions, as to 
the truth of which he professes himself an infidel. 
If, in ordinary life, I affirm I do not believe such-and- 
such a report, I am expected to be able to state 
clearly what the report is which I do not believe. 
Tou cannot, I conceive, until you have yourself 
defined the Orthodox Faith, profess yourself an 
infidel in it, for you cannot clearly know in what 
you are an infidel. 

Inf. But supposing I desire to be an orthodox 
Christian, how am I, among the multitudinous sects 
of Christianity, to discover the Orthodox Faith ? Not 
being able to discover it, I must remain an infidel ; 
not in the sense of impugning, but of being utterly 
ignorant of true Christianity. What, therefore, again 
I ask, is this Orthodox Faith ? for it is evident the 
pith of the whole matter is in the Orthodoxy, not 
the Faith. The grossest idolater has greater Faith 
than most Christians, but he has no Orthodoxy ; 
his faith, as you would say, is simply superstition. 
So among Christian sects each professes to hold the 
orthodox faith, but where is an ignorant infidel to 
assure himself of finding it? The Roman Church 
avers it one thing — the Greek Church another— the 



STANDARD OF ORTHODOXY. i 

Anglican Church another : then suddenly starts up a 
Wesley, an Irving, a Konge, claiming its discovery 
for the first time by himself. When, therefore, you 
quote the Orthodox Faith, may you not as well refer 
every man, with his Bible in his hand, to his own 
imagination? Is it not a phrase for every one's 
opinion in religion, claimed by each for himself, and 
conceded by none to his neighbor? It resembles 
the panacea which every empiric advertises as pecu- 
liarly his own discovery and property ; warning, at 
the same time, the world against every competitor in 
the same profession as an ignoramus, an impostor, a 
non-qualified practitioner. How are we, the igno- 
rant non-professionals, to decide when such doctors 
disagree ? 

Che. Your present argument is unconsciously the 
Roman argument as advanced against the Bible. 
The Jews say it is one book, the Samaritans another, 
the Protestants another, the Mormonites another, 
and so forth. Who can tell what the Bible is ? 

Inf. And the argument is sound. Who can posi- 
tively state which is the true Bible, or which is the 
orthodox faith ? These fundamentals being uncertain, 
your whole religion, it follows, is an uncertainty also. 
How can you answer that initial objection? 

Che. As I intend to answer your subsequent ob- 
jections ; by analyzing them, by decomposing them, 
by examining what they really amount to. You say 
all the different churches differ in their definition ot 
the orthodox faith ? 

Inf. I do : and is it not a fact? 

Che. Pardon me. It is the reverse. Neither the 



8 STANDARD OF ORTHODOXY. 

Roman, Greek, Eastern, or Anglican Churches hold 
different definitions of the orthodox faith. All hold 
the same three Symbola or Creeds of the one faith 
in Christ. Ask any member of any one of these 
Churches " whether he does not hold any clause you 
please to specify in any one of these Creeds as a 
divine truth." 

LsTF. I would ask then a Greek, whether he holds 
the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father 
and the Son, as interpolated in the Nicene Creed, for 
a divine truth? 

Chr. He would certainly answer " Yes." He 
would tell you his objection was not to the doctrine, 
but to its after insertion as a Western Church inter- 
polation in a Creed once for all settled and limited. 
And with this view many in the Western Church 
sympathize, holding at the same time the truth of 
such procession in its full integrity. Mention a 
second clause. 

LsTF. I cannot call to mind another. 

Chr. There is no other. That is the only shadow, 
for it is nothing but a shadow, of difference in the 
definition of the Orthodox Faith, as laid down in 
the three Universal Creeds by the whole Catholic 
Church of Christ, and accepted and taught bj^ the 
same. 

Inf. Do you mean to say that whoever holds the 
three Creeds, the Apostles', the Nicaean, and the 
Athanasian, does therein and thereby hold the 
Orthodox Catholic faith ? 

Chr. Certainly. They are the accepted Creeds of 
universal Christendom : to accept them is to accept 



STANDARD OF ORTHODOXY. 9 

the Orthodox Faith, to reject them is to reject tlie 
Orthodox Faith. 

Inf. How then comes Rome to insist upon the 
acceptance of another, the Tridentine Creed, as an 
essential part of the Orthodox faith ? Ha, how is 
that? and Rome is at least one half of Christendom. 
Now what becomes of your non-difference ? 

Chr. It is not affected by such a fact, any more 
than it would be by your citing the Thirty-nine 
Articles of the English Church instead of the Tri- 
dentine Creed of Rome. Neither the one nor the 
other are acknowledged by the rest of Christendom ; 
they are articles partial, not universal. The rest of 
Christendom need in no way accept them. Not 
accepting them, it remains as Orthodox and Catholic 
as ever, because it holds that which held alone and 
by themselves, without excrescence or addition, has 
always constituted both Orthodoxy and Catholicity — 
the Three creeds. Neither, again, is Rome or Eng- 
land less orthodox or catholic, because it pleases 
them to symbolize or articulize other, as they judge, 
divine truths of Revelation. Reject them or accept 
them, you are not, provided you stand fast on these 
universal Creeds, less or more Orthodox or Catholic. 

Inf. But no one can become a minister of the 
English Church, unless he accepts the Thirty-nine 
Articles. 

Chr. True. 

Inf. Yet you say his acceptance of them does not 
make him a whit more orthodox or catholic? 

Chr. It does not. They may confirm him in his 
catholicity and orthodoxy, or they may test him in 

1- 



10 " STANDARD OF ORTHODOXY. 

them, that's all. They do not bind, nor are they 
imposed upon the laity ; yet a layman who never 
signs them, but repeats as his confession of faith the 
Three Creeds in the liturgy of the Church, is as 
thoroughly catholic and orthodox as the clergyman 
who signs and is bound by them. They might be 
added to or entirely cancelled to-morrow, without 
affecting the catholicity or orthodoxy of the Church, 
always provided the standards of the Universal Faith 
remained intact and inviolate. 

Inf. That opens a wider view than I anticipated 
of the Unity of Christendom in faith. 

Chk. We are to debate, at your request, not on 
petty, frivolous points of difference, — black gowns or 
white gowns, reading or intoning, singing or chanting, 
low w^aistcoats or high waistcoats, — nor upon those 
profound, and perhaps unholy speculations about 
predestination and free will, reprobation and election, 
which are utterly beyond the capacities of limited 
beings like ourselves to determine, but on those 
great, salient, prominent doctrines of Christianity, 
which, as point-blank opposed to heathenism, over- 
threw Heathenism and the whole heathen Infidelity. 
These doctrines thus laid down and accepted by the 
universal Church are Catholic as opposed to other 
doctrines, which, however true, have not been so laid 
down or accepted, and are therefore not Catholic. And 
they are orthodox, because the only possible, true, final, 
and authoritative construction of the faith, as taught 
and delivered from the beginning to the Church 
of Christ, must be the construction put upon it and 
accepted by such Universal Church of Christ itself. 



STANDARD OF ORTHODOXY. 11 

These Creeds constitute that construction, and are 
therefore Orthodoxy, or the right and true interpre- 
tation of the faith. They were universally put for- 
ward from every branch of the Church, as the inter- 
pretation such branch had from the first admitted 
and taught ; they were consequently universally 
laid down, and subsequently in their promulgation 
universally again received. In other words, the 
General Councils did no more in framing them than 
give back to Christendom, in a summary form, what 
they themselves had from Universal Christendom 
brought and received. So far then from no one 
knowing what the Orthodox Faith is, no one that at- 
tends divine worship in our Church need be, or in- 
deed with common attention can be, ignorant of it. 

Inf. But suppose they never attend Church,-— 
myself for instance ? 

Chr. Then in lieu of saying " who can know what 
the orthodox faith is ?" you should frankly say, " I 
don't wish to know, I don't care to know, and I 
won't know what the Orthodox Faith or heterodox 
heresy is ; they are all the same to me. I don't care 
whether Christendom really holds Unity of Faith at 
the bottom of all its different hierarchies or not." 
But is it just to say, " Who can know ?" when a very 
brief interpellation brings out the great fact, that 
nothing is easier than to ascertain that all Christen- 
dom has one and the same foundation of both Ortho- 
doxy and Catholicity ? It is not, therefore, every 
man's imagination, a phantom in a cloud, metamor- 
phosing itself to each spectator's fancy ; it is not the 
sand, but the pyramid ; not the whirlwind, but the 



12 STANDARD OF ORTHODOXY. 

rock ; not a morass, but a high and very distinct 
way ; nothing uncertain, formless, or shifting, but an 
indestructible, inerasible seal, always at hand, to be 
put, as it were by God Himself, before the eyes of 
every one who really desires to see what is " That 
truth in Jesus which saves the soul." It is not diffi- 
cult then to know what the Orthodox Faith is, for it 
is not difficult to read and digest the three Creeds of 
the Catholic Church. 

Ijstf. It is not so hard, certainly, according to your 
explanation ; but a Romanist might give me a very 
different explanation. How then am I to decide ? 

Ohr. No Romanist lives who will not exhort you 
to believe and hold these Creeds. Do that first — 
being done, other creeds are in my opinion superflu- 
ous. K he think otherwise, exercise then your own 
judgment. But thus far, Anglican, Roman, Greek, 
all Christendom agree — to this point all would con- 
cur in leading you. 

Then as to your next assertion, that every man 
thinks that he has the orthodox faith whilst at the 
same time he refuses to concede the possession of it 
to his neighbor ; if it were so, it would only prove 
that every man without exception was convinced 
there was an orthodox faith, that in his own case at 
least there was such a thing as special revelation, 
and that for some mysterious reasons God had refused 
his neighbor the illumination He had mercifully 
granted to him. How would the concession of this 
assist your infidelity ? To me it only appears as an 
intensified application of a divine truth in oui* own 
favor, a specimen of Judaizing Christianity, an 



CATHOLICITY. . 13 

attempt to roll up the standard of the Church within 
some presumed experience of our own. But it has 
no relation to infidelity. 

Ikf. But it staggers an infidel disposed to consider 
the truth of Christianity, when its first aspect thus 
presents such an infinite variety of individual ortho- 
doxies, treating every other Christian opinion but his 
own as an heterodoxy. 

Chr. We said that the whole Church of Christ 
had both received and established the Criterion of 
Orthodoxy, did we not ? 

Inf. Yes. 

Chr. No Catholic Churchman dissents from that 
criterion. No catholic churchman therefore can 
possibly regard any man whatever who holds the 
Three Creeds as guilty of heterodoxy. If he did, he 
would in that degree swerve from the Church : he 
would so far be a dissenter, not a churchman. Your 
objection therefore applies simply to schismatics, and 
these I must leave to vindicate themselves. It does 
not apply to nine-tenths of professing Christians ; 
we, for instance, concede orthodoxy to the Roman 
and Eastern Churches on the Three Creeds. On the 
same creeds they concede it to each other and to us. 
These creeds are the criterion, and therefore beyond 
them or on one side of them concession or non-con- 
cession is immaterial. To hold them in common is 
to hold the community of the orthodox faith. Even 
in the schismatic view therefore the objection mili- 
tates against infidelity ; on the Church view, it is 
based on an erroneous assumption and falls entirely 
to the ground. 



14 CATHOLICTTY. 

Inf. But, practically, Unity of Worship at any rate 
does not exist. An Anglican will not worship with 
a Romanist ; a Romanist will not pray with an An- 
glican ; a dissenter holds and avoids Rome as the 
scarlet harlot, the pope as the man of sin, thinking 
also the Chnrch of England little better than a red 
rag or purple remnant of the same Corrnptress. 
Practically it is so ; your orthodox unity is but a 
paper unity ; as living men you are a body torn into 
pieces, not two limbs of which will consent to act and 
harmonize together. 

Chr. Let us again analyze. All Roman Catholics 
will worship in common, will they not ? 

Inf. Of course. 

Chr. There at once is an Unity of Worship amongst 
two hundred millions, a vast consolidation in itself. 
Next, all Christians of the Greek Church will pray 
and worship in common : another consolidation of 
one hundred millions. You cannot call such masses 
" pieces," otherwise than as the sun or a planet is a 
" piece" of the universe. Compared to such enormous 
populations any single European kingdom is indeed 
a "fragment," much more " a mere chip" of civiliza- 
tion than these are of Christianity. Thirdly, no 
Anglican refuses to pray with either Romanist or 
Greek ; nor any Protestant, I believe, with an An- 
glican. Thus there does exist such a practical unity 
as considering the freedom of mind and spirit, there- 
fore the liability to opinionative differences which 
Christianity generates is a fact unparalleled, and, only 
because it is a fact, credible. But, further, your 
present objection does not in reality touch Chris- 
tianitv itself, it onlv touches it — as the devil himself 



UNITY OF FAITH. 15 

always has and can touch it — ''in its heel," as man's 
nature incarnates it with its own weakness and 
passions. Mankind will not be of one heart and of 
one mind ; the not being so you impute to Chris- 
tianity, not to man's nature, refusing to see that the 
greatest unity that ever has been effected of that 
nature, in its hope, faith, and charities, is the act 
of that Christianity alone. Introduce the simplest 
question for free discussion into the House of Com- 
mons, that House will split into at least two, perhaps 
into half-a-dozen judgments upon it: is that an argu- 
ment against the existence or utility of the House ol 
Commons or of the English Constitution ? If its 
members agree to discuss and differ within the Con- 
stitution, is it not rather a positive proof of the 
excellency of that constitution which permits ful] 
liberty of mind and speech, but yet deals wdth any 
attempt to dissolve the unity of the empire as capital 
treason against itself? The crime would be in the 
criminal, not in the constitution. So the sin of schism 
is in our individual nature, not any inherency or 
result of Christianity. 

Inf. Rome is not an individual nature : she is, as 
you say, a mass of two hundred millions, and she 
treats you, the Anglican Church, as the great schism 
of the West, — she does not and will not pray with 
you, — where then is the Unity, when only one party 
does not decline, the other rejects. Common Prayer? 

Che. What then ? I am not to answer for Rome 
as Rome extra the Catholic Church. Let Rome, as 
Joash said of Baal of old, plead for herself and her 
own peculiar Romanisms. I do not bring forward 
mere Anglicanisms, why do you bring forward mere 



16 UNITY OF FATTH. 

Romanisms? These and such like questions form 
questions between England and Rome, not between 
Christianity and Infidelity. 

Inf. But you must admit such lack of Unity, 
w^hichever side be in fault, to be a shameful spectacle 
in your religion. 

Chr. Quoad the great Creeds of that religion, I 
again remind you, such lack of unity does not exist ; 
quoad the chasms which divide our Spires as they 
each rise from the foundation of those creeds, the 
infidel has nothing to do. His objection is not " your 
Spires are diff'erent and separate, but the very founda- 
tion on which they all rest is utterly unsound." On 
that objection we confront him. If he shift his ground 
to the different architecture of the spires themselves, 
he ceases to be an infidel, and we cease arguing with 
him as such. Is not the truth this? Tou do not 
wish Christianity proved divine : you look out for the 
strongest apparent arguments against its divinity: 
want of unity strikes you as being one of such. On 
examination you discover a fearful fundamental 
Unity, fearful I mean to such a frame of mind. You 
then fall back upon poor human nature, as if that 
were Christianity ; or upon Rome, as if she were the 
Chui'ch Catholic. If, on the other hand, I forgot 
myself and quoted the communion of Rome to you 
as an example of unity, you would at once retort, 
"Unity! the unity of night! of darkness! of igno- 
rance ! of the Dead Sea !" 

Inf. Quite fair, too. 

Chr. I think not. It would be fair, w^ere I a 
Romanist ; the attack would be on Rome, and as a 



UNITY OF FAITH. 17 

Romanist I should defend myself and her. I am an 
Anglican Catholic, and am not called upon to answer 
any objection which applying to Rome does not 
apply to catholicity. 

Inf. Nevertheless, numbers tell : when Rome with 
her two hundred millions treats your dozen millions 
or two dozen millions as heretics, when all red-hot . 
Protestants damn her in return as the lady of Baby- 
lon ; snch a spirit in a Church which professes to be 
divine charity itself is enough to make and to keep 
one an infidel. 

Chk. Which is as much as to say that just in pro- 
portion as the spirit of the Devil prevails against the 
spirit of Christ in the Church, so much less effective 
will the Church be against the devil or the world, so 
much less powerful will she be to convert souls or 
extend her Master's faith. And who doubts it, in- 
fidel or Christian ? That which you now state is a 
truism in which all concur, which all feel, only the 
Infidel exults, the Christian mourns for it. It does 
not enter into our debate at all : no one disputes that 
the less of Christ we have, the less likely we are to 
make others Christians ; what has such a wretched 
fact to do with the truth itself of Christ and his 
faith ? Nothing. He has Himself told us that it 
would be a miserable fact and produce miserable 
effects : that the want of this unity amongst all 
believers would be the most potent of all bars to the 
conversion of the world : that its existence would 
more than any thing else prevent faith in the world. 
" I pray that all may be one, as Thou, Father, art in 
me, and I in Thee, that they also may be one in us : 



18 UNITY OF FAITH. 

that the world may helieve that Thou hast sent meP 
But how is the existence of such a spirit, any more 
than the existence of sundry other vices amongst 
professing communities, any real plea for infidelity ? 
We will not be Christians, because all other men are 
not already angels. We will not be sober, because all 
other men are not temperate. We will not believe 
God, because men that do believe in Him are not yet 
'' perfect in one." I submit there is neither logic nor 
intellect in such ratiocination, " nntempered mortar," 
as at the best it is. All men may be liars to their 
profession, liars from the very fact of that profession 
which they belie being the truth. Every Christian is 
in this sense more or less a liar in life : no Christian 
fulfils the whole truth which he professes and does 
really believe. Is he therefore a hypocrite ? Far 
from it. Or is that holiness of which he falls short, 
because he falls short of it, therefore a lie ? He 
knows even from that which he has attained of it 
the very contrary : it is a truth strong as the ever- 
lasting hills, which no short-comings of his own can 
in a single grain of its existence detract from or 
affect. The errors of human nature under the Gos 
pel are not the test of the truth of that Gospel, they 
are nothing but a witness to one of its first doctrines, 
" That the very best men fall short of Christ, the 
glory of God." Yet you object the existence of the 
very fact of division which the Gospel in its truth 
exposes, in its pity prays for, and in its power cures, 
as an argument against the truth of that Gospel ; 
that Gospel and yourself agreeing in the fact, only 
whilst you quote it as a reason for infidelity in God, 



UNITY OF FAITH. 19 

the Gospel would bring you to that God to correct 
and remove it. But in another view, supposing the 
whole Church were unanimous, and such unanimity 
were guided by a central head, supported by the 
whole body of the laity of the Church, would infi- 
delity or the world even as it is join and approve of 
it ? Would not that very state, the non-existence of 
which it now objects to the Church as a reason for 
not believing in it, be the very last state in which it 
would wish to see the Church existing, flourishing, 
and reigning ? 

Inf. Possibly — for it might be an intolerable 
tyranny. Three or four hundred millions ruled spir- 
itually by one man or by one Lay-Church conclave 
and democracy ! — the world would not in these days 
for a moment submit to such a revival of ecclesias- 
tical supremacy, lay or clerical. 

Chr. The Unity of the Church, then, would not 
be tolerated by such as were not of the Church ? 

Inf. To speak frankly, I do not think it would. 

Chr. Not if that Unity inferred, as it does, one 
mind and heart among all the laity of the Church in 
government and doctrines? 

Inf. Make your conscience easy. It will never be. 

Chr. Why not? 

Inf. The world, outside such a lay and clerical 
Unity, would never permit it — it would be a Lay- 
Papacy. 

Chr. Yet that state which Infidelity would never 
permit, which of all possibilities it most deprecates 
and exerts itself the most strenuously to prevent, is 
that state the falling short of which by the Church, 



20 UNITY OF FAITH. 

through, in great measure, the machinations of this 
Infidelity itself, is alleged as a principal argument 
against belief in such a Church and its doctrines. 
Is not this something beyond inconsistency? Has 
it not the appearance of intellectual hypocrisy ? 

Inf. Let ns concede then that the banner of the 
Church of England is the banner of the Orthodox 
Faith in Christendom and England alike : that in the 
acceptance of the Scriptures and the Three Creeds 
consists the acceptance of the Orthodox Faith ; that 
in this faith — saying nothing of extraneous addi- 
tions, Protestant or Papal — there is a living spiritual 
Unity of four hundred millions of souls. Our rela- 
tive positions are thus fixed. I have a definite system 
and a definite standard of that system in arms be- 
fore me ; and unless I subvert the one and capture 
the other, Orthodox Christianity retains her ancient 
supremacy. These preliminaries settled, I shall, as 
we agreed, proceed first with certain grave objections 
against the Scriptures of this Christianity. Are you 
acquainted with Newman's writings ? 

Chk. With the writings of both the brothers — to 
which do you refer? 

Inf. To my fellow-infidel, Francis William New- 
man. Some of the difficulties he specifies appear to 
me insurmountable ; the more so, as they come from 
a person of irreproachable morality, which, you will 
I suppose admit, adds great weight to them. 

Chr. a certain degree of moral weight to his 
objections a moral man may justly claim — and such 
is Mr. Newman. But I am at a loss to see what 
greater intellechtal force the objections of Mr. New- 



ESTFIDELITY. 21 

man can cany than those of Rousseau or Voltaire — 
characters the reverse of moral. If pure morality of 
life is to settle the question between Christianity and 
Infidelity, infidels themselves will confess their posi- 
tion ridiculously hopeless. Infidelity hitherto has 
been put forward and accepted as identical with 
exemption from all spiritual and moral obligations ; 
the only compliance it allowed was with the demands 
of the law or of personal honor ; and of the latter, 
every individual was himself the judge. And from 
such obligations it is a notorious fact that infidels 
have always exempted themselves. The best we can 
say of your two best men in this respect. Gibbon and 
Hume, is, that they were not coarse voluptuaries — 
they were not indecorous Epicureans. But of active 
morality on behalf of others I never heard them 
accused. And as to the rest of the professing 
infidels of the last and preceding centuries in Eng- 
land and on the Continent, their works are the mani- 
festo of the principles on which they lived. It is not 
easy to select one who did not justify the utmost free- 
dom of conduct upon this very ground, that he was 
an Infidel. The phase has now changed. Few of 
our infidel writers in the present generation charge 
themselves with personal licentiousness or profanity ; 
an alteration upon which infidelity is very much to 
be congratulated. But for each moral infidel, a 
thousand moral Christians can yet be counted: 
granting therefore a certain moral force to the 
objection of a moral infidel, the moral force which 
must on the same rule be conceded to the belief of a 
thousand moral Christians, would in such a discus- 



22 NEW PHASE OF INFIDEL MORALITY. 

sion as ours reduce its value to nothing, or rather 
decide the question summarily in favor of Christi- 
anity. 

Inf. But Infidelity has now nevertheless an ad- 
vantage in the personal characters of many of its 
advocates, which it never perhaps previously pos- 
sessed — with that additional strength you must be 
prepared to cope ? 

Chr. True. But the right view, I conceive, of the 
matter is this. If infidelity be true in itself, no 
amount of improbity or immorality, in persons pro- 
fessing infidelity, will falsify the truth of their intel- 
lectual opinions. So also with Christianity and 
Christians. The personal worthlessness or worth of 
an astronomer does not aflFect the truths of astrono- 
my. The religion of a man is not necessarily true 
because he is a Socrates or a Zeno in morality ; nor 
necessarily false because he is a Charles or a Louis 
in immorality — unless it is patent that in either case 
the life is as naturally and inevitably the production 
of the principles avowed, as an apple is of the apple- 
tree or the hair of the animal body, in whicli case 
the life is but the expletive of the religion. Let us 
regard it in another light. Francis William Newman 
is a man of unimpeachable moral life ; so is his more 
celebrated brother, the Oratorian, John Henry New- 
man. The latter, as a conscientious Roman Catholic, 
does not believe his brother to be within the pale of 
salvation ; the former, again, afl&rms of his brother's 
faith, " For the peculiarities of Romanism, I feel 
nothing, and I can pretend nothing but contempt, 
hatred, disgust, or horror — a system of falsehood, 



RELATIVE VALUE OF PERSONAL MORALITY. 23 

fraud, unscrupulous and unrelenting ambition."^ 
Here are two brothers, diametrically opposed in re- 
ligion, yet both of more than ordinary excellence 
and purity of moral character. 

Inf. What signifies it, then, whether they are Eoman 
Catholics or Infidels : cannot they both enter heaven ? 

Chr. That is the very point to be solved. 

Inf. I see no difficulty in its solution. 

Chr. Do you not ? What is the worth of a man's 
personal morality if the whole weight and influence 
of his character be devoted to color and support an 
enormous system of " falsehood, fraud, unscrupulous 
and unrelenting ambition," which is what Francis 
William Newman affirms his brother's religion to be? 
Personal morality becomes, on such a supposition, a 
frightful misnomer — ^it ceases to exist — it is as the 
countenance of moral Brutus was to conspiracy and 
murder. It is absurd to speak of a man as moral 
who applies his whole energies to the perpetuating 
and extending of a thoroughly depraved and crimi- 
nal system. His own morality is as a drop of dew 
compared to the deluge of immorality he lets loose 
on society, if the system he represents be such as 
Francis William Newman describes Roman Catholi- 
cism to be. In such case, personal morality would 
be, even in commercial judgment, only a white and 
jewelled hand executing a forgery. The white hand, 
the gentlemanly address and demeanor, would pass 
the forgery, but you would not say they were any 
compensation for the injury inflicted by the act on 
society. 

1 *' Phases of Faith," p. 72. 



24 RELATIVE VALUE OF PERSONAL MORALITY 

Inf. I would treble the penalty. 

Chr. On the other hand, if the Roman Catholic 
be, as John Henry Newman believes, the only God- 
appointed way of salvation, what is the worth, or 
wherein consists the virtue of Francis William New- 
man's morality, when he denounces that ''only way" 
as a system of ''falsehood, fraud, unscrupulous and 
unrelenting ambition ?" If John Henry Newman be 
right, then is Francis William Newman doing all in 
his power, with all the great weight of his moral 
character, to ruin irretrievably the souls of men, by 
inducing them to regard the " only way" of salva- 
tion as a system of falsehood. Both these brothers 
are equally sincere, moral, and conscientious in their 
convictions, but one of the two is of necessity a most 
pernicious character; one of the two must, just in 
proportion to the influence he sways, be inflicting 
ruin on the cause of truth and the souls of men. 
Whichever it be, can he who has destroyed be ad- 
mitted, on any plea, to the same approbation as he 
who has saved souls ? In the decision of so moment- 
ous a question, the petty circumstances whether the 
individual dresses as a pietist or ordinary person, 
drinks wine or water only, eats meat or vegetables 
only, starves or indulges, are lost in comparison with 
the character and general effects of the system which 
that individual represents and would render supreme. 
I am far from maintaining " the Cause" to be every 
thing ; the characters of its supporters, nothing. By 
the latter, we are often necessitated for a time to 
form our conclusions of the foi'mer. But I aflirm, 
that correct habits of personal, social, or monastic 



RELATIVE VALUE OF PERSONAL MORALITY. 25 

life must be estimated in an individual as dust when 
balanced against the results of that man's mental 
and doctrinal teachings on perhaps millions of recip- 
ient souls. The responsibility attached to intellect 
is as much greater than that attached to morality, as 
the world of mind is greater than a man's domestic 
or social circle. If Francis William Newman make 
you an infidel, you are in his brother's behef lost 
forever. Adjust his morality against your eternal 
ruin ; is it not swallowed up as an invisible atom in 
the most permanent of crimes? Is it not as if a 
water-drinker should poison a city reservoir, or a 
punctual early-riser set fire to the Bank ? Or if 
John Henry Newman convert you to Rome you 
become, in his brother's opinion, the member and 
abettor of a system of fraud and falsehood. If you 
prove true to that system, you must yourself become 
false and fraudful; remaining so, your soul is lost; 
against that loss, poise your proselytizer's moral 
character. It has become a nonentity, entirely out 
of the question, further than as a vizor and decoy — 
nothing more than if an assassin who poignarded 
you was yet scrupulously clean in person and correct 
in costume. 

Inf. Who, then, is competent to judge between 
two systems the antipodes of each other, especially 
when the defenders of each are equally moral and 
conscientious, both of great erudition and varied 
accomplishments, in perfect command of all the data 
and advantages necessary to enable them to form a 
right conclusion — yet one diverges from your Church 
to Romanism, the other to Infidelity. 

2 



26 RELATIVE VALUE OF PERSONAL MORALITY. 

Chr. My dealing is at present with the Infidel. I 
have stated, in a distinct work,^ my reasons as an 
Anglo-Catholic for rejecting the additions of Kome 
to the Scriptures and the Three Creeds. Within the 
Three Creeds and the Catholic Canon England and 
Rome are one — beyond it they split and differ. But 
such difference is one of degrees in faith, radically 
distinct from that which exists between both of us 
and infidelity. I am now confronting infidelity on 
intellectual grounds. If morality is to be the test, 
not another word need pass between us — the victory 
of Christianity has long since been won, and never 
in this respect doubted or disputed for eighteen cen- 
turies. But we are so confident that intellectually 
as well as morally Infidelity has not a shadow of a 
chance against Christianity, that we cast aside the 
morality or immorality, the good, bad, or indiffer- 
ent lives of its impugners — Voltaire, D'Alembert, 
Hobbes, Paine, Robespierre, Marat, or their contra- 
ries, such as Strauss and Newman — as irrelevant to 
the mental merits of the issue. Christianity can 
well afford, I think, to present Infidelity with all it 
would demand on that score, without giving away a 
particle of its real strength. Newman, you observed, 
has impressed you much. 

Inf. I have been much struck by certain of the 
difiiculties he brings forward in his ''Phases of 
Faith" against the credibility of the Bible. Most of 
the arguments which he advances are of course re- 
suscitations of old objections, which perhaps because 
they are worn and hackneyd, or because they do -not 

1 " Vindication of the Church of England." Rivingtons. 



EXCEPTIONS TO THE SCRIPTURES CONSIDERED. 27 

in effect succeed against Christianity, I am disposed 
to lay little stress upon. Unsuccessful objections, 
fifty times repeated, and always with the same 
failure, speak for themselves — that however sound 
they appear to the disputant, the world at large 
pronounces them frivolous or nugatory. Mere verbal, 
incidental, or petty inculpations, of so mighty a 
system as it must be confessed Christianity, rightly 
or wrongly, is, are as little likely to overthrow the 
hold it has established upon the superstitious faculties 
of mankind, as the peckings of a hen, or the marble 
shots of a boy, to loosen the mortar and stone of an 
ancient Norman stronghold. I care therefore little 
for such disputations as the two Genealogies ; or at 
what time, or if at all, Christ was in Egypt ; or if the 
narratives of the resurrection can in every minute 
point be made to accoi^d. These are rather disserta- 
tions for microscopic minds than questions by which 
to test the vitality or divinity of Christianity. But 
those I have selected from Newman's "Phases of 
Faith," are of such range and calibre, as becomes 
artillery brought to bear upon such a spiritual Gib- 
raltar as your Christian Church. They are broad, 
massive, radical statements, aimed at once at the root 
of the matter, at the foundation-stones of your reli- 
gion. I will adduce them in order. The first is this 
assertion : 

" Prophecy is generally regarded as a leading 
evidence of the divine origin of Christianity. But 
this had also proved to me a more and more 
mouldering prop. As to the prophecies of the Pen- 
tateuch, they abound as to the times which precede 



28 EXCEPTIONS TO THE SCRIPTURES CONSIDERED. 

the centuiy of Hezekiali : higlier than which we 
cannot trace the Pentateuch. No prophecy of the 
Pentateuch can be proved to have been fulfilled, 
which had not already been fulfilled before Heze- 
kiah'sday."^ 

Can you refute this last especial statement, which 
to my mind infers the entirely human fabrication of 
the oldest portion of your Scriptures. What prophecy 
of the Pentateuch can be proved to be fulfilled which 
had not already been fulfilled before Hezekiah's day ? 

Chr. Does Newman mean visual or oral prophecy ? 
Prophecy spoken to the ear, or prophecy acted to the 
eye, or prophecy combining both oral and visual 
delivery ? 

Inf. He does not specify. He affirms prophecy 
generally ; if there are distinctions, take the last you 
have mentioned, which combines the two kinds, oral 
and visual. 

Chr. Genesis is the first book of the Pentateuch. 
The twenty-second chapter contains what Christians 
consider a typical or esoteric prophecy of the Cru- 
cifixion of Christ, and of the birth of the Catholic 
Church. The visible signs of this sacramental act 
are, — 

A father, distinguished, for certain reasons, as the 
Father of the Faithful — Abraham. A son — mirac- 
ulously begotten by the Word of Promise, not by 
the operation of nature, and on the preservation of 
whose life and consequent progeny entirely depended 
the realization of many sublime and celestial en- 
gagements to his race. A mountain — Moriah, in 

1 "Phases of Faith," pp. 113, 114. 



VISUAL PROPHECY. 



29 



Palestine, which in one sense, that of birth, was the 
native country of such son ; in another sense, that 
of race, was only the land of his temporary sojourn. 
The sacrifice of this son by his own father, command- 
ed by Divine authority ; the son bearing himself 
the altar-wood on which he was to be sacrificed ; the 
father nevertheless proceeding with him. The son 
bound and laid by his father on such altar, so borne 
and constructed. The sacrifice itself, though in act 
prevented, in type fully consummated — a deatli 
inflicted which yet was no deatli, for the son lives 
after such death. A name assigned the mountain, 
to distinguish it as the exact spot of the whole world 
where the great act thus predicted would in the sight 
of all nations take place : ''' Jehovah-Jireh, in the 
Mount of the Lord it shall be seen." Tlie creation 
out of this sacrifice, after its death, of a Seed which 
was to be multiplied as the stars of heaven, to possess 
the gate of its enemies, and in which all the nations 
of the earth should be blessed. 

First, for the visual part of this prophecy. Is there 
any record of such a sacrifice as is here described 
taking place before the days of Hezekiah, on Mount 
Moriah, the mountain on which Jerusalero and the 
Temple were subsequently built, and of whicli Cal- 
vary formed an eminence ? 

Inf. I cannot recollect any. 

Chr. No one, I believe, would assert the existence 
of a shadow of evidence to such effect. 

Int. But is it, in fact, a Prophecy at all, and has it 
been fulfilled since Hezekiah's day ? 

Chr. To believe that it has, is part of that faith 



30 VISUAL PROPHECY. 

which constitutes ns Christians, in contradistinction 
to those who believe that it has not — Infidels. To us 
the visual part of this prophecy explains itself as 
clearly as the representation of the tragedy of Julius 
Csesar presents to an historic audience his fall and 
death in the Capitol. We believe that in this type 
Abraham and Isaac bear the same relationship to 
God and to Jesus Christ, as the representatives of 
Csesarand Cassius in such a drama, do to Csesar and 
Cassius themselves. As these latter represent to the 
audience what was indeed transacted at the Capitol, 
so Abraham and Isaac represented to the ancient 
Church what was to be transacted at a future time on 
Mount Moriah. Such as had full faith that such an 
act would be consummated for the salvation of man- 
kind, became by such faith " the faithful" — " the 
Church" — heirs, therefore, of all the Divine promises 
sealed by the blood of so awful a victim. We who 
now believe that it has been effected, become by the 
same belief members of the same church, heirs of 
the same promises as they of old ; only they looked 
forward, we look backward, to the Great Sacrifice 
itself. To the realization of the promises they and 
we — they in Paradise, we on earth — ^look forward 
in common as to one inclusive heaven. Neither 
they without us, nor we without them, are to be 
glorified. We hold, therefore, that in this dra- 
matic parable of the Kingdom of God given to 
the ancient family of the faithful, Abi'aham sig- 
nifies Almighty God, the Father of the Faithful — 
of all that believe in Jesus Christ. Isaac is Jesus 
Christ, born not by nature, but of the Holy Ghost 



VISUAL PROPHECY. 31 

and the Blessed Virgin. Of Mount Moriah, where 
the prophetic type was acted, and to which the 
Church constantly looked as the future scene of its 
fulfilment. Mount Calvary is, as we observed, an 
eminence. .The altar-wood is the Cross borne by 
the co-eternal Son Himself. " Jehovah- Jireh " — the 
Crucifixion was prepared and seen on this Mount 
of the Lord before the face of all nations, on the 
national Feast of the Passover, in the very centre, as 
it were, of the civilized world, between the Eastern 
and Western divisions of the Roman Empire. Christ, 
the Lamb of God, slain before the foundation of the 
world, was there laid by His own Almighty Father, 
as the sacrifice for the sins of the whole world, upon 
this Altar of the Cross ; He was '' smitten of God :" 
" the Lord laid upon him the iniquities of us all." 
And yet, though thus dead and buried. He rose again 
the third day, and ascended ''whither he was before," 
to the same Father, to inherit the same glory as he 
had with the Father before the world began. The 
Christian Church, therefore, maintains the visual 
part of this prophecy to have been fulfilled eighteen 
hundred and fifty-four years since on Mount Calvary. 

Ijstf. But I, as an Infidel, deny that it is either 
prophetic of such an event, or, if prophetic, that it 
has been so fulfilled. 

Chk. Of course you do ; otherwise you would not 
be an infidel. Vast, radical, fundamental diff*erences, 
high as heaven, deep as hell, exist between Christi- 
anity and Infidelity. ISTo morality can fill the infinite 
gulf up ; no philosophy can bridge it ; no knowledge 
ignore it. These difi*erences will stand forth more 



32 VISUAL PROPHECY. 

distinctly as we proceed. But what I have now to 
maintain is, that, in these differences, intellect and rea- 
son are with the believer and against the unbeliever. 

Inf. Do you aver that reason and intellect are 
with you in the very point under examination — a 
father commanded to slay his son ? 

Chr. In this case entirely. Were I an infidel, 
neither believing prophecy nor its fulfilment, but 
rejecting the whole scheme of Gospel salvation, — 
regarding this act in an isolated light, not in its 
illustrative connection with an eternal and ever- 
progressive Spiritual System, I should, with you, 
pronounce it contrary to nature and reason. That 
System being now revealed to me, as I believe, of 
God, I see that unless the father had been com- 
manded himself to off*er up his son, there would not 
to the Ancient Church have been in this solemn act 
of sacrifice any representation or teaching whatever 
of that most blessed truth which lies at the founda- 
tion of the Church's faith — that the sacrifice of 
Christ is the sacrifice made and offered up by the 
Almighty Father Himself to reconcile the world 
unto Himself. " God so loved the world, that he 
gave his only-begotten son, to the end that who- 
soever believeth on him should not perish, but have 
everlasting life." ^ On this truth reposes our whole 
faith, that the Gospel is not merely the dispensation 
but the evidential act of the precedent love of God 
to us, the creatures He, from the moment of our 
creation, designed to reign with Him in a blessed 
immortality. Sin and its consequences brought us 

^St. Johniii. 16. 



VISUAL PROPHECY. 33 

SO fearfully into collision with God's holiness, that 
his eternal love for us and our souls could find no 
scope for action, consistently with such holiness, 
towards us, in the condition to which we had 
reduced ourselves — enemies to it in the very spirit 
of our minds. We were, therefore, by the same 
eternal love which created us at first, to be created 
anew. This new creation in Christ originates 
solely and proceeds solely on the divine fact, that 
however low our race degraded itself, the love 
of God towards us has never for a moment been 
quenched or diminished. But unless the Ancient 
Church had been made to see that it was the Father 
Himself whose will thus decreed, and whose hand 
thus executed, the atoning sacrifice between his 
justice against sin and his love for our souls, w^liat 
assurance could they have had that this sacrifice 
was, indeed, not of man, nor of the will of men, but 
of the supreme and almighty Creator of heaven and 
earth Himself? That assurance was given them: 
they believed it, and such belief became the " right- 
eousness of Christ " to them. Had another than the 
father been commanded to ofter up " his son, his 
only son Isaac," then this great type would have 
broken down, and failed to teach the Ancient Church 
in the very article on which it was designed to be 
the revelation of God to them — that the sacrifice of 
our spiritual restoration is the sacrifice of the Father 
Himself, out of that love wherewith He had from the 
beginning loved us, and the full flow of which our 
fall in Adam alone had interrupted. I maintain, 
therefore, the command in this instance to Abraham 

2- 



34 VISUAL PKOPHECY. 

to be in complete harmony with the reason and 
intellect of every man who believes and compre- 
hends the Gospel scheme of salvation. But to you, 
the Infidel, not so believing, but objecting to the 
command as in the last degree contrary to the first 
instincts of nature, my reply upon the narrative 
itself, without reference to its subsidiary character 
as a manifestation of the Gospel, is — The same God 
who commanded, stopped also the sacrifice. Your 
objection, therefore, neutralizes itself, and yet de- 
mands from you this explanation — Why was the 
sacrifice up to a certain point commanded by Divine 
authority ; and beyond such point, which, according 
to the Christian system, completes the visual type, 
by the same authority not permitted to proceed ? It 
is thus that many objections of infidelity are to us, 
who know the Gospel, confirmations of our faith. 
The fact that it was Abraham the father who was 
commanded to lay the wood of the altar on his son, 
and bind him, and, in type, slay him, proves to us 
that the God who did thus, according to the type, 
sacrifice his only-begotten Son, is indeed the Author 
of the type and of the Scriptures in which that type 
is recorded. 

Inf. This ratiocination is plausible but not con- 
vincing, as you adduce no evidence beyond your 
faith that this fulfilment has really taken place in 
Mount Moriah. 

Chr. We consider the historical or external evi- 
dence, which establishes that the Crucifixion of Jesus 
Christ in every way corresponded to this typical 
description of such a sacrifice, incontrovertible. We 



VISUAL PROPHECY. 35 

also consider the Pentateuch as beyond cavil the 
work of the great Jewish legislator. "We find the 
type and antitype of two of the most extraordinary 
facts recorded in all history or in all literature to be 
explanatory of each other. But this single type 
being, though not a minimum, yet only one of 
many illustrations of our faith, we bring it into court 
and comparison with all the rest of the voluminous 
evidence in favor of Christianity. The concert is 
complete. We feel ourselves rationally compelled 
to believe. I venture to affirm, that no intellectual 
Christian ever became such except through the 
process of Infidelity. You must not suppose that I 
or other educated Christians have not passed through 
the same spiritual agonisms as to the truth or false- 
hood of Christianity as you are now undergoing. 
To suppose so is, I think, a common error on the part 
of Infidels. Most educated Christians have been 
infidels. The same examination, research, science, 
or conscience, w^hich discovers to them mysteries in 
Christianitv, discovers also to them insurmountable 
contradictions and absurdities in Infidelity. And 
therefore, not because they can explain every thing 
in Christianity, but because, so far as it is explicable, 
it forces their intellectual assent, their intellect suc- 
cumbs to it in its integrity in both the intelligible 
and in that which is at present unintelligible — the 
Mysterious. 

Inf. Permit me. Your religion imparts to you 
enthusiasm. Enthusiasm is soul-action. We Infidels 
have, if you Christians have, souls : yet we liave not 
soul-action. Why? We are content with our or- 



36 ISAACAL SACRIFICE. 

ganization and repudiate other influence than such 
as this organization exercises of itself upon us. I 
admit that, putting aside Christianity, creation re- 
mains no less a tremendous mystery ; so great and 
frightful a mystery in the very permission and ex- 
tension of misery and pain, that I do not, by reject- 
ing Christianity, approach an inch the nearer to its 
solution. I only reject one scheme, among many, 
which pretend to its solution. Perhaps it is not 
solvable ; perhaps from the very nature of the ma- 
terials of the universe, the meaning of the terms 
" evil" and " good" are not fixable. You must admit 
that which is '' good" under certain circumstances 
to be positively " evil" under others. And we both 
admit certain fundamental instincts of nature to be, 
if any thing can be so called, sanctities. Now, in 
this case of Abraham, there is a command, violating 
this sacred instinct of our own nature. I take up 
the Bible and read these words, " It came to pass 
after these things that God did tempt Abraham, 
and said unto him, Offer up thine only son Isaac for 
a burnt-offering upon one of the mountains which 
I will tell thee of." ^ Conceding, as I am prepared 
to do, that the identity between this mountain and 
Calvary, between the very process, mode, and order 
of the Isaacal and Christian sacrifices are com- 
plete, I by no means admit the Divine authority of 
this transaction and its inferences. I appeal to you, 
if you, having an only son, the hope of your race, 
heard from earth, heaven, or hell, a command, ''Sac- 
rifice him with your own hand," could you believe 

» Gen. xxii. 1, 2. 



ISAACAL SACRIFICE. 37 

sucli to be the voice of the Creator of our natural 
instincts ? Is it possible it could be ? 

Chr. Most possible. 

Inf. How in, for instance, this case? 

Chr. God is the Creator of both our natural 
powers and of the instincts resultant from their use. 
He has, therefore, if we proceed on the question of 
right, the same undoubted right of commanding us 
to devote both to Him, as he has of commanding us 
to devote our money, time, or devotion to Him. 

Inf. Granted, granted ! But here is the crux. We 
are certain the God of nature has implanted in us 
such affections and antipathies as our nature possesses. 

Chr. Not as our present nature ; but proceed. 

Inf. Parental affection is perhaps the strongest 
instinct of nature ; yet in Abraham's case this is 
overridden by — w^hat shall I call it? — something 
termed God commanding him to make to this God 
a sacred immolation of his son. The statement of 
itself is enough to make a man of any natural affec- 
tions an infidel. 

Chr. Or a Christian. 

Inf. How possibly so ? 

Chr. I am not adducing now the notorious facts of 
society, that such parents as are not indeed Chris- 
tian do sacrifice their children without the slightest 
reference to natural affection, to the most contempt- 
ible and degraded idols : they murder the souls of 
such children for the sake of their own temporal 
aggrandizement. I reject entirely the idea that a 
parent who has no natural affection towards his God, 
can have any true natural affection towards his own 
children. 



38 ISAACAL SACRIFICE 

Inf. Why, the very savage has such. 

Chr. Far from it ; the savage will educate his 
child to steal, rob, murder^ assassinate ; and doing 
all this himself, will do so with all the affection of 
his nature, such as it is, to his child. The thief in 
London will, with all affection for his child, yet 
bring it up thoroughly a thief : in higher stations, 
the most w^orthless woman of fashion will, with all 
affection for her daughter, bring her up as a heart- 
less, soulless, most contemptible frivolist. On the 
facts, therefore, of human nature, savage or relined, 
I might, I think, refute your notion that interference 
in the abstract between parent and child is in any 
degree unnatural. 

Inf. But in the concrete, as here — interference 
authorizing, in fact, murder. Strong language, but 
Christianity is strong ; therefore answer it. 

Chr. "Thou shalt do no murder," from the oracles 
of the same Deity, would prove the inapplicability of 
such a term to the sacrifice of Isaac. It is absurd to 
say that the Author and Giver of all life can be 
guilty in. taking away his own gift. If you admit 
the Pentateuch to be of God, all objections to any 
command of God therein, are by that very fact 
annulled. If you deny the credibility in this partic- 
ular instance of the command to a father to sacrifice 
a son, being God's, I respond, the circumstances pre- 
ceding that command prove it to my judgment to 
emanate absolutely from God, and from God alone. 
" It came to pass after these things," what things ? — 
a series of Divine visions, appearances, and miracles, 
extended for the space of fifry years, through which 
Abraham had held personal communication with the 



ISAACAL SACRIFICE. 39 

Angel of the Covenant, and had himself witnessed so 
many instances of a power above all nature exercised 
by Him, as to leave him no alternative than to believe 
that the Being who was thus manifesting Himself 
and his ways to him, was the Lord God of creation. 
Isaac himself was one of these many miracles. It 
seems, therefore, beyond the bounds of probability 
that Abraham should be either deceived in the 
source whence the command to slay his son issued, 
or, however severe the parental conflict, he should 
not exercise the same faith, in with his own hand 
recommitting the life of his son to God, as he had 
done in receiving him, contrary to all nature, from 
the hand of God. The firm belief that the same 
God, who, by his Almighty power, has given us this 
life, can and will by the same power restore that 
life, once, twice, a thousand times from death, or 
place it utterly above the reach of death, is part of 
the common faith of Abraham and ourselves — of our 
one Church. ''The resurrection from the dead," faith 
in which was by this act of faith required from Abra- 
ham, in the sacrifice of his son, is, as you know, a 
standing article of the Church Catholic. It is the 
very vis vitce of Christianity. '^ If the dead rise not," 
says St. Paul, '' what profits it me to have fought with 
beasts ?" It underlies the whole religion of respon- 
sibility — call it Christian or otherwise — to God in a 
future state. Now had this command been the first 
which had emanated from the Almighty to Abraham, 
I would concede nature might have justified his re- 
jecting it as the suggestion of a power far diff'erent 
from that of the author of nature. But the preceding 



40 ISAACAL SACRIFICE. 

experience of all his life since he quitted Babylon 
preserved him from error on this point. That which 
constitutes faith is the belief that there does exist, far 
above nature, a nature-creating, nature-controlling, 
nature-dissolving God, and that He addresses Himself 
to that part within us which in one sense is as supe- 
rior to this material, inanimate system of nature, as 
He Himself, its author, is. Abraham had this faith. 
''He believed God as above nature;" this belief con- 
stituted both his righteousness, and his faithfulness 
of action. You, as an infidel, do not believe that 
there exists any power above nature able to give life 
to the dead. According to your infidelity, your son 
being dead, is dead forever. No power in or above 
nature can revivify him. Any power, therefore, 
celestial or otherwise, promising such an eventuality 
to you, and challenging you to test the truth of such 
promise, would from the very fact of your infidelity 
be regarded as a self-created delusion of your own 
senses. To my mind, Abraham's reason as well as 
faith was of a higher cast than yours. All the ex- 
perience of his life was on the side of a personal, 
superintending Deity, to whom nature was nothing 
more than his own material pleasure. He had from 
Him received Isaac from the grave, for so far as 
nature was operant the womb of Sarah was as dead 
as the grave. If he committed him at his command 
to a second grave, the God who had once giv^n, could 
give him again from death. On that faith he pro- 
ceeded ; that faith is the truth ; there is such a God ; 
nature and life are nothing but forms or phases of 
bis will ; if He reveals Himself to us, the acceptance 



ISAACAL SACRIFICE. 41 

of such revelation places us on a rock higher than 
nature ; it connects us with Himself. What we do in 
such faith is done as if it were done in the certainty 
that his omnipotence is ours. An Infidel, therefore, 
who has never been once in all his life in any 
communication with Deity, Avho has no faith in the 
existence of Deity, who considers the grave the " be- 
all and the end-all " of our present existence, is 
necessarily staggered at this proof in Abraham of 
his faith in God and his omnipotence. Knowing 
that Abraham could not mistake the voice of Jeho- 
vah, we Christians, on the other hand, deem it most 
reasonable both that God should have exacted this 
proof of his faith in one of the main articles of the 
Christian Creed, and that he should have been will- 
ing to prove the full sincerity of his faith in such 
article, though the death to be inflicted by his own 
hand was that of his only son in whom " his Seed was 
called." We believe the faith thus exercised by 
Abraham to be sanctioned by the soundest Reason. 
Let me or any other man only be certain that the 
command is that of the Almighty, given to me 
for purposes I am not called upon to comprehend, 
I or any reasonable being in Abraham's circum- 
stances would act as Abraham did, and for the same 
reason which St. Paul assigns, " accounting that 
God was able to raise Isaac up, even from the dead ; 
from whence also he received him in a figure." ^ 
What is more dead than the dust from w^hich we are 
originally created ? We return to it ; yet, like Abra- 
ham, we believe that the same omnipotence which 
created us from the first, can, and according to his 

^ Heb. xi. 19. 



4:2 . ISAACAL SACRIFICE. 

Word will, re-create us from the second dust — the 
dust of our own death and dissolution. What can 
be more consistent with the first instincts of the 
heart, or the first inferences of reason ? There is thus 
no question between Christianity and Reason on this 
subject. Both admit that, if God so commanded, 
it was the highest reason in Abraham to obey with- 
out any reference whatever to consequences. Infi- 
delity takes the ground that God did not, or could 
not, so command at all. Christianity shows that no 
other command than such would have been didactic 
to the Ancient Church of the radical truth which 
underlies the whole Gospel of salvation, and that 
obedience to it by Abraham completed and perfected 
the whole tenor of a life passed in communion wdth 
the Divine power which issued it. It would have 
been more marvellous for Abraham to have dis- 
obeyed than to have obeyed the Divine injunction. 
The faith of the resurrection he had ; with such, in 
the mere abstract, God was not content: He tried it 
therefore in the deepest well of his earthly afi*ections ; 
yet so profound was his faith in the power of God, 
that, God commanding, he at once resigned his son 
to prove it. No reasonable man having such faith, 
and being placed beyond all doubt, as Abraham was, 
that the command proceeded from God, but would 
act as the Fatlier of the Faithful did. I repeat, there- 
fore, that in the case of the Isaacal sacrifice, reason 
is entirely in accordance with Christianity and in 
opposition to Infidelity. 

Inf. Your argument, I think, still labors under 
this objection. Abraham believed the voice to [)e 
that of God ; you now believe it because Abraham 



ORAL PROPHECY. 43 

then did ; you thus build your faith not on a foun- 
dation of its own, but on Abraham's credence and 
credibility. This is what Newman characterizes as 
" faith at second hand ;" not your own, bat another's, 
at least, yours by adoption only. 

Chr. Not so. Abraham's faith is mine, not by 
such imputation, but on distinct grounds, such as 
Abraham could not from the nature of things pos- 
sess. That Abraham could not otherwise than know 
of a very truth the command to be of God, is proved 
to me by the whole tenor of his past life. He 
believed in the power of God in the resurrection to 
life from the dead. That faith in God was righteous- 
ness to him. He obeyed in that faith, the command 
to sacrifice Isaac ; that obedience, as St. James states, 
made such faith perfect. I have the same faith, and 
it constitutes the same righteousness or medium of 
my acceptance by the Almighty as it did of his. 
Then, in addition, I have now evidence, which 
Abraham had not, that this voice was, as he believed, 
the voice of God. 

Inf. How? 

Chr. The fulfilment of the second or oral part of 
the prophecy delivered by the same Angel of the 
Covenant who commanded the sacrifice itself. Out 
of the crucifixion of Christ, from his dead body, the 
Church Catholic of all peoples, nations, and lan- 
guages has been born. Its numbers are as the stars 
of heaven. It possesses the gate of our spiritual 
enemies, the powers of the keys to bind and loose 
from sin, Satan, and the world. Agaiust it the gates 
of hell never have or can prevail. It was intended 



44 ORAL PROPHECY. 

to, and does, embrace all nations without exception 
in its preaching, responsibilities, and privileges. 
" Teach and baptize all nations." And it has thus 
become the blessing of the earth by the Almighty, 
through the death of his Son. Now that there is such 
a Church, that including its celestial and terrestrial 
members, it is in number as the sand of the sea- 
shore ; that its Sacraments assume to bar hell and 
open heaven ; that it dates its birth from the sacrifice 
of Christ on Mount Moriah ; that it owns Him only 
as its Author, High-priest, Prophet, and Sovereign ; 
that it comes and is by all the nations professing it, 
accepted as the blessing of Salvation to their souls, 
are facts of universal acknowledgment. I find all 
these facts promised in the prophecy by the same 
Being who commanded the sacrifice. What is the 
necessary conclusion of my intellect ? The same as 
that of Abraham's faith — the Being who spoke to 
him was God. But I come to that conclusion, not on 
the same personal evidence as Abraham did, but on 
vaster grounds — grounds covering thirty centuries 
in time, and the extent of all Christendom in space. 
Abraham believed the command to be Divine from 
previous, I believe it to be so from subsequent, evi- 
dence. Supposing I reject its Divinity, the difficulty 
of explaining the identity of the Isaacal sacrifice with 
the crucifixion of Christ, and of the distinctive prom- 
ises attached to it with the distinctive facts of the 
Church catholic, on any grounds short of omnipotence 
and omniscience in prescribing the one and realizing 
the othei-, is to my mind insuperable. The solution 
that it was God who commanded, who promised, who 



ORAL PROPHECY. 45 

has hj the creation of the Christian Church verified 
the promises, is the only one which approves itself 
to my intellect. Neither the visual nor the oral part 
therefore of this typical prophecy was fulfilled before 
Hezekiah's day. Since his day the visual has been 
fulfilled in the crucifixion of our Lord ; and the 
oral, already largely fulfilled, continues its course 
towards full verification in the gradual progress and 
acceptance of the religion of the Cross by " all the 
nations of the earth." 

Inf. j^ewman, you are aware, aflirms that the 
Pentateuch was the production of a later age than 
the Mosaic. 

Chr. He affirms so, it appears to me, repugnantly 
to all the evidence we have or can have on the sub- 
ject. Even if this prophecy dates 800 and not 1500 
years before Christ, it is not the less of divine inspi- 
ration, nor, except as such, is its fulfilment at all 
more explicable. 

Inf. That inference may, I think, be admitted : 
and that the eff'ect also upon Abraham, Isaac, and 
the Church of that time, from the mysterious and 
appalliug nature of the Ordeal, was more impressive 
than the mere word-reading of the whole Bible a 
hundred times over would be to us. 

Chr. But this is only one of many prophecies 
which may be adduced in disproof and subversion 
of Newman's assertion. Let me take one .other of 
quite another kind ; such a one as the popular mind 
can easily understand and decide upon. We took 
the former from the first, we take this from the 
last Book — Deuteronomy — of the Pentateuch. The 
twenty-eighth chapter of Deuteronomy contains, ac- 



46 ORAL PROPHECY. 

cording to oiir Faith, the prophecy of the future 
specific judgments of God on the Jewish nation in 
the event of their rejection of Jesus Christ " as the 
end of their Law and Prophets," — as the Messiah of 
the Promises. As the language itself in which these 
denunciations are couched has scarcely a parallel in 
the whole circle of literature for plain sublimity of 
expression, I will not apologize for reading certain 
parts of it aloud : 

" The Lord shall make the rain of thy land 
powder and dust. Thy heaven that is over thy 
head shall be brass, and the earth that is under 
thee shall be iron. The Lord shall cause thee to 
be smitten before thine enemies : and thou shalt 
be removed into all kingdoms of the earth. Thou 
shalt not prosper in thy ways : and thou shalt be 
only oppressed and spoiled evermore, and no man 
shall save thee. Thou shalt be only oppressed and 
crushed alway: so that thou shalt be mad for the 
sight of thine eyes which thou shalt see. The 
stranger that is within thee shall get up above thee 
very high ; and thou shalt come down very low. 
The Lord shall bring a nation against thee from 
far, from the end of the earth, as swift as the eagle 
flieth ; a nation whose tongue thou shalt not under- 
stand ; a nation of fierce countenance, which shall 
not regard the person of the old, nor show favor to 
the young. And he shall besiege thee in all thy 
gates, until thy high and fenced walls come down, 
wherein thou trustedst, throughout all thy land : 
and he shall besiege thee in all thy gates throughout 
all thy land, which the Lord thy God hath given 
thee. And thou shalt eat of the fruit of thine own 



ORAL PROPHECY. 47 

body, the flesh of thy sons and of thy daughters, in 
the siege, and in the straitness, wherewith thine 
enemies shall distress thee. The tender and delicate 
woman among you, which would not adventure to 
set the sole of her foot upon the ground for delicate- 
ness and for tenderness, her eye shall be evil toward 
the husband of her bosom, and toward her son, and 
toward her daughter, and toward her young one that 
Cometh out from between her feet, and toward her 
children which she shall bear : for she shall eat them 
for want of all things secretly in the siege and strait- 
ness, wherewith thine enemy shall distress thee in 
thy gates. And ye shall be left few in number, 
whereas ye were as the stars of heaven for multi- 
tude. And the Lord shall scatter thee among all 
people, from one end of the earth even unto the 
other ; and among these nations shalt thou find no 
ease, neither shall the sole of thy foot have rest : but 
the Lord shall give thee there a trembling heart, 
and failing of eyes, and sorrow of mind : and thy 
life shall hang in doubt before thee : and thou shalt 
fear day and night, and shalt have none assurance 
of thy life : in the morning thou shalt say. Would 
God it were even ! and at even thou shalt say. Would 
God it were morning! for the fear of thine heart 
wherewith thou shalt fear, and for the sight of thine 
eyes which thou shalt see."^ 

Inf. Sublimity and simplicity combined, certainly. 
The grandeur, the massive Doric grandeur of the 
language of Scripture, I am the first to acknowledge ; 
it has, I believe, very much to do with the hold its 

* Deut. xxviii. 



4:8 SOLEMNITY OF THE STYLE OF SCRIPTURE. 

doctrines obtain over men's minds. But its sub- 
stance may for all that be as pure fiction as that of 
other masterpieces of composition, — the poems of 
Homer, Virgil, Milton, or Shakspeare. 

Chr. You must, I think, admit a distinction. 
Virgil and Shakspeare, for instance, wrote ex- 
pressly with a view to beauty of composition in 
the putting forth of confessed fictions, avowed such 
by themselves — known to be such by their readers. 
No one perusing the Scriptures fails, on the con- 
trary, to observe, that the whole stress in them is 
laid not on the language, but on the truths the 
language is intended to convey. It would be im- 
possible, I think, for any impartial judicious critic 
to point out in the whole volume of the Scriptures 
one attempt at what we call ''fine writing." The 
Book of Isaiah is, perhaps, the highest composition 
the world possesses in magnificence of both ideas 
and language. Yet it would be hard to find a verse 
in it in which the language is not entirely subordi- 
nated to the truth designed to be expressed. Take 
the most elaborate compositionist in this century, — 
Macaulay, the historian. Some of his pages contain 
a remarkable union of distinct excellences of style ; 
but the impression produced on our minds in read- 
ing such language is, in kind, entirely difi^erent from 
that which the Scriptures compel us to feel in read- 
ing their language. In one sense, that of comparison 
with the magnitude of the truths revealed in it, the 
language of Scripture is felt by us to be considered 
by the Scriptures themselves as nothing. In another 
sense, that of being such language as absolutely 



SOLEMNITY OF THE STYLE OF SCEIPTURE. 49 

forces US, from the humblest parable to the highest 
soarings of prophecy, to be conscious of this inten- 
tion, infers to my mind more than human wisdom. 
Setting aside the question as to whether every single 
word is inspired, it might, I think, be without dif- 
ficulty established, that the ordering of the whole 
tone and style of the language of the Scripture, is no 
less of God than are the truths of which such lan- 
guage is the medium of communication to our souls. 
There is another point also observable : you would, 
though an infidel, be startled and shocked at finding 
a jest in either words, intention, or act, in the Scrip- 
tures, would you not ? 

Inf. Certainly. 

Chk. But why should you? 

Inf. It is contrary to all our ideas of the character 
of the Scriptures. 

Chr. Whence came those ideas of such character ? 

Inf. From the Scriptures themselves. There is 
not a jest in them: the world knows it; the knowl- 
edge grows up and forms part of our nature. If I 
then really chanced to meet lightness of words or 
verbal abuse in them, such nature would of necessity 
be much, and, if I were a Christian, would be pain- 
fully surprised. 

Chr. Here then is a whole literature extending 
through fifteen centuries, and of course through 
many successive generations of writers of different 
eras, circumstances, condition, erudition, habits, and 
feelings, standing alone in this respect, that from its 
first to its last page there is an utter abhorrence 
from all " foolish jesting," facetiousness, derisiveness, 

3 



50 SOLEMNITY OF THE MATTER OF SCRIPTURE. 

levity, or frivolity of either thought or expression. 
An uniform, uninterrupted gravity of diction, an 
un deviating solemnity of thought, an unswerving 
tenor of most impressive seriousness marks them as 
apart and distinct from any other literature the 
world has produced. This, I say, is of God, not of 
man. We Christians explain it in a simple, easy 
way, carrying complete conviction to our intellects. 
The books which make up Scripture were each and 
all written by the inspiration of one and the same 
Holy Spirit ; therefore, their tone is throughout one 
and the same— most grave, earnest, serious, and 
truthful ; the voice of the Spirit of God speaking in 
human language to the souls of men on the things 
pertaining to the salvation of those souls, and their 
indissoluble connection with the kingdoms of eternity. 
But how do you explain it ? 

Inf. The very subject-matter of them would create 
such solemnity of diction. 

Chr. How so? — what subject-matter? 

Inf. That of the connection which exists between 
the souls of men and an eternal futurity. As Milton's 
solemn subject compelled a solemn style, so the 
solemn matter of the Scriptures admits no other than 
a correspondent diction. Every successive writer 
of the Scriptures, having the same solemn truths to 
propound, must of necessity use, in their delivery, 
similar solemnity of language ; and thus resulted 
the uninterrupted gravity of your Scriptural litera- 
ture from its origin to its close of fifteen centuries. 

Chr. This reply is fatal to your infidelity ; it takes 
for granted the truth Christians advance, that a sue- 



SOLEMNITY OF THE MATTER OF SCRIPTURE. 51 

cession of men were raised up on purpose to reveal 
and propound these Divine truths to mankind. You 
say their language was necessarily in unison with 
the solemnity of their revelations. I do not see the 
'' necessity" of it, unless you come with us still fur- 
ther, and admit the language as well as the matter 
to have been prescribed by one and the same Holy 
Spirit. There would then be, as we hold, a neces- 
sary correspondence. But claiming the necessity of 
the respondence, you even thus admit the Divine 
succession of prophets and of prophecy. Tou cannot 
get over the difficulty of accounting for this uniform 
solemnity in the use of language by the Scriptures 
otherwise than by taking it for granted that a suc- 
cession of men were really raised up to perpetuate 
the revelation of the same uniform truths ; the uni- 
formity of the matter necessitating uniformity of 
diction in all of them from Moses to St. John. This, 
I apprehend, is imperfect Christianity, not infidelity. 
If you concede the divinity of the matter of Scrip- 
ture or the Divine succession of the prophets and 
apostles who in Hebrew and Greek delivered it, the 
divinity of the language would rather be a question 
between me as an orthodox and you as a heterodox 
Christian, than between us as Christian and infidel. 
If you cannot, as an infidel, surmount the fact of the 
language of Scripture being from Genesis to Revela- 
tion in one unchanging character otherwise than by 
becoming half Christian, I am not on the present 
occasion called upon to meet you in this new aspect 
of yourself. But this is episodical : let us revert to 
the Pentateuchal prophecy I just in part read to 



52 ORAL PROPHECY THE JEWS. 

you. Newman's position is, that unless it was fulfilled 
before the days of Hezekiah, it has never been fulfilled 
since. His words are, " No prophecy of the Penta- 
teuch can be proved to have been fulfilled which had 
not been already fulfilled before Hezekiah's day." ^ 

Inf. He holds the Pentateuch to be a composition 
of Hezekiah's age, and therefore, in its Mosaic char- 
acter, spurious or a forgery. 

Chr. We will first prove this Pentateuchal proph- 
ecy not to have been fulfilled before Hezekiah's day. 
An enumeration of the specific judgments denounced 
in it, compared with the specific facts of Jewish his- 
tory before Hezekiah's period, will decide this point 
at the cost of little research. Before Hezekiah's 
century the land of Judsea had not become powder 
and dust, nor did it so become till very many cen- 
turies after his time. Nor before his century were 
the " whole nation of the Jews only oppressed and 
crushed alway." Nor had they become a proverb 
and a by-word among all nations ; nor a sign 
and a wonder forever. Nor had any nation from 
the ends of the earth, whose emblem was the eagle, 
whose language was unintelligible to the Jews, be- 
sieged them in all their gates through all their 
land. Nor had any such catastrophe a^ the siege 
of the whole compressed nation in Jerusalem by 
the nation of the eagle, of the fierce countenance, the 
iron heart, and alien tongue ever taken place. Nor 
had they ever been scattered among all people from 
one end of the earth to the other. Nor had they 
ever been, nor were they then, wanderers under a 

' Phases of Faith, p. 113. 



ORAL PROPHECY THE JEWS, 53 

" wonderful plague of long continuance," without 
home, ease, or rest, among all people. For genera- 
tions subsequent to Hezekiah's age, the Jews re- 
mained in possession of Judgea ; their land retained 
its fertility ; they continued the peculiar people ; 
their heavens were not made brass, nor their land 
ii^on ; their patria, ritual, and temple continued their 
own ; their high and fenced walls did not come 
down ; no such siege, with its collateral effects, hap- 
pened to them in any one place in their collective 
capacity as a nation ; nor any such universal inflic- 
tion of misery and contempt as is particularized in 
the prophecy. These facts are as notorious as any 
we can quote from any history of any nation. What- 
ever political or religious calamities the Jews under- 
went before or in Hezekiah's reign, none of them 
can be forced into assimilations with the prominent 
features of this prophecy. 

Inf. History compels me so far to concur. But 
the question here is. Has this prophecy been fulfilled 
since Hezekiah's reign ? l^ewman emphatically de- 
nies it, his words being," No prophecy of the Penta- 
teuch can be proved to have been fulfilled, which 
had not already been fulfilled before Hezekiah's 
day." Admitting it was never fulfilled before, can 
you refute his position that it has never been fulfilled 
since his reign ? " It is a vain attempt," he adds, " to 
forge polemical weapons out of these old prophets 
for the service of modern creeds."^ 

Chr. Infidelity is most confident in the making of 
infidel assertions : the value of them we shall, as we 

1 Phases of Faith, p. 113. 



54 ORAL PROPHECY PALESTINE. 

proceed, put to the proof. You have travelled in 
Palestine? thousands in these days do so. Is not 
Palestine the land the Jews once inhabited ? 

Inf. Beyond doubt. 

Chr. What is the present soil of that land between, 
for instance, Jerusalem and the Mediterranean ? 
Can it be more truly described than that its rain is 
powder and dust? A man, as you well know, may 
travel there fifty miles without seeing fifty blades of 
green grass on his journey. One of the rainy seasons 
of Judsea has now for many centuries been entirely 
suspended; and, as a consequence, " the heaven over- 
head has long since become brass, and the ground 
underfoot as the bare iron." The soil has been dried 
to dust, and the winds have swept this dust, century 
after century, into the sea, leaving nothing but the 
aridity of the sand and the sterility of the rock 
behind. This Palestine was once the land of " foun- 
tains and flowers, of the former and the latter rain, 
of the vine, the palm, the cedar, the olive, and the fig 
tree, of milk and honey, of kine and corn." The term, 
"the glory of all lands," applied to it, was no ex- 
aggeration. Let us refer to any one who has passed 
through it, or consult any trustworthy work of travels 
on the subject, the words, "the heaven of. Palestine 
is brass, the ground iron, the rain thereof powder 
and dust, Jerusalem a desolation," will sum up in 
one sentence all the descriptions they give us of the 
country and its aspect. 

Inf. But other countries have in their physical 
features undergone as extraordinary deteriorations 
as Palestine. 



ORAL PROPHECY PALESTINE. 55 

Chr. Has England? or France? or Germany? or 
Spain ? or Portugal ? 

Inf. I do not allude to modern countries. 

Chr. As countries these are not modern, they are 
as old as Palestine ; even as states they may claim 
a respectable antiquity. Eighteen hundred years 
affords great scope for changes in nature as well as in 
politics. But of none of these is the soil or climate 
deteriorated ; probably in every one of them it is im- 
proved ; or, again, has such a deterioration occurred 
in India, Algiers, Tunis, Morocco, Asia Minor, Ma- 
cedonia, the Mediterranean Isles, Italy, Greece ? 

Inf. a deplorable change for the worse has taken 
place in all the countries you have named which are 
under the Mohammedan rule. 

Chr. Undoubtedly, but not in the soil, the sea- 
sons, the climates, the fountains, the atmosphere. 
However disastrous Islamite barbarism has been to 
the arts, sciences, civilization, and humanity of the 
countries under its sway, nature itself in those we 
have mentioned remains the same. It has not re- 
mained the same in Palestine. 

Inf. But surely some other countries must in three 
thousand years have experienced changes similar in 
character to those which have occurred in Palestin(3. 

Chr. There are other countries. 

Inf. Then what becomes of the force of this argu- 
ment for the fulfilment of Prophecy ? 

Chr. The force is infinitely increased and multi- 
plied by the fact that every one of these countries, 
and these countries alone, are subjects of the very 
same Word of prophecy which has passed upon 



56 ORAL PROPHECY. 

Palestine. Snch are under the same category as 
Palestine, all laboring under effects produced by a 
power above nature, but none experiencing to the 
same degree the severity of that power. 

Inf. And you account for it by prophecy ? 

Chr. I do; thus — the God from whom proceeded 
these emanations of omniscience which we call pro- 
phecy is He by whose will and pleasure alone, Na- 
ture is Nature. Whether He acts through nature, 
without nature, or through new creations in nature, 
matters, in result and effect, nothing. He is the 
cause, and his the action. " The rain of thy land 
shall be powder and dust," that was the word which 
proceeded from Him more than three thousand years 
since upon Palestine. Palestine has become powder 
and dust. How^ matters not — ^perhaps by his acting 
in and through nature : perhaps by his changing, 
reversing, and revolutionizing, nature ; perhaps by 
his making that to be nature which previously had 
neither existence nor imaginability. 

Inf. Do you believe, then, that God is constantly 
calling new existences forth ? 

Chr. I do. He is not only an eternal but sempi- 
ternal God ; not only a creator to and from eternity, 
but ever-creating in that eternity. 

Inf. I can understand that He may be sempiter- 
nal in the sense of ever evolving new forms and 
systems from nature and matter, but not in the 
sense of ever-creating existences out of mere nihil- 
ity or nothingness. 

Chr. You stop short then of where I do. But be 
that as it may, the powers of creation being entirely 



MKDI;^ OF PROPHECY. 57 

under his control, the direction of them to any pur- 
pose He pleases, must on either supposition be con- 
ceded. All Nature in this sense is but the Medium 
of God. 

Inf. There, in one sentence, you define my whole 
faith and religion. 

Chr. Indeed! 

Inf. I believe there is an Almighty God. I be- 
lieve nature to be the medium between Him and 
ourselves, the only medium; in and through that 
medium alone is He to be found by us ; the study of 
nature is the study of God, therefore the only true 
religion ; all others are imaginary. I hold the Works, 
and not any Word of God to be to us the only true 
medium of Himself and his will. Nature indeed is 
God. 

Chr. We shall soon come to analyze your propo- 
sition and see what it is worth. Has God then 
through nature, or Nature without a God, so changed 
as we have described the physical aspect of Pales- 
tine ? 

Inf. Nature without a God? No, I cannot say 
so, except by denying my own position that Nature 
is the medium of God. 

Chr. Without ceasing to be, that is, a Deist, and 
becoming an Atheist ; well, then, God through the 
medium of Nature ? 

Inf. The admission would accord with my ideas, 
but how does it with yours? For prophecy and 
miracle infer a supernatural interference with Na- 
ture, do they not ? 

Chr. By no means necessarily so : It matters not, 

3* 



58 MEDIA OF PROPHECY. 

as I premised, whether God acts by or without na- 
ture. To put the proposition with logical accuracy, 
" Whatever it pleases God to act materially by, that 
becomes nature ;" in this sense God is ever summon- 
ing new existences into creation. 

Inf. JSTot in this world. 

Chr. According to the Christian faith, yes. Chris- 
tianity teaches that there is at this instant going on 
a process of God in the creation, by purely arbitrary 
means of Jiis own, of new natures in us and the world 
at large. 

Inf. But not of new existences. 

Chr. Yes, of new existences, not yet completed, 
but commenced and still proceeding — the consum- 
mation of which is reserved, or passes on to a new 
physical creation of heaven and earth to synchronize 
with the manifestation of these new natures: they 
are each to keep time and place with each other. 
Whether God, therefore, in Palestine used physical 
nature as it was, or created other means which thus 
became nature, affects not the essence of the ques- 
tion. The fact is before us. How came it a fact ? 
By the agency of nature ? 

Inf. Well! 

Chr. And Nature is, you say, the medium of God ; 
then what Nature has done in Palestine, God Him- 
self has done through ISTature. Is that clear ? 

Inf. Proceed. 

Chr. But precisely that which has been thus done 
through nature, was, if not fifteen, at least, by New- 
man's own theory, eight centuries before the disper- 
sion of the Jewish nation pre-menaced and pre-par- 



MEDIA OF PKOPHETIC ACCOMPLISHMENT. 59 

ticularized in spoken and written words. Now does 
Nature, the inanimate medium of God, use speech 
or words? Does it write or deliver the writing ? 

Inf. No. 

Chr. Then though it may act, it cannot, any more 
than the sun, the moon, the wind, the ground, the 
waters, the forest, or the cloud, tell us beforehand, in 
speech or writing, what it will act ? 

Inf. It cannot. 

Chr. Here are certain effects produced in Pales- 
tine. Giant Nature produces them ; still here also, 
centuries before Nature has carried them out, are 
these very effects definitely specified in words and 
writing, as to take place in the event of a certain 
line of conduct being pursued by the Jewish j)eople 
in this very land of Palestine. Did Nature write or 
speak those words ? 

Inf. How could it ? 

Chr. Who did then? 

Inf. Men wrote and spoke them. 

Chr. How came men to write and speak them ? 
Man, simply as man, possesses no insight into futu- 
rity. Nature has effected this change in Palestine. 
I concede, you observe, your postulate here. How 
came it, fifteen centuries before, to be written and 
spoken, that this was the very thing which Nature 
should do, and do exceptionally as a " sign and a 
wonder." Let Infidelity explain this. It requires 
explanation, for Nature cannot speak or write ; man 
cannot see centuries onward, much less calculate on 
any possible exception in this or that country to the 



60 SCKIPTUKAL PROPHECY. 

general laws of I^ature, least of all from the excess 
of verdure and fertility to " powder and dust." 

Inf. Your question is a perplexing one. 

Chr. Consider : man speaks and writes, does he not? 

Inf. Yes. 

Chr. Mere material nature, the nature by which 
such changes have been effected in Palestine, neither 
reads nor writes. From whom does man derive his 
capacities ? 

Inf. From God. 

Chr. As he derives from God the capacity to 
speak and write at all, it is possible that he may also 
be caused of God to use that capacity in speaking 
and writing thus and thus. 

Inf. It is possible. 

Chr. Nature being the medium of God, God can 
always regulate and command it ? 

Inf. Admitted. 

Chr. Has nature consciousness ? 

Inf. Of course not. 

Chr. Unconscious nature effects in one particular 
country what man fifteen hundred years before had 
predicted she would in that particular country, 
exceptionally to all her laws, effect. He who always 
regulates and commands nature is God. What is the 
direct inference ? 

Inf. I see your conclusion. God revealed; man 
spoke and wrote ; in due time, l^ature, God's medium 
of action, fulfils God's revelation so spoken and so 
written. 

Chr. Can you explain, I do not say the theory but 



NATURE AND PROPHECY. 61 

the hard, substantial facts of this and many other 
specific prophecies, in any other possibly rational 
way ? Let us again revert to the prophecy itself. 
Can you mention any nation which was a nation and 
a race, both one and the other, then — be it in Moses 
or Hezekiah's time — and is a nation and a race now, — 
a space of at least two thousand five hundred years, — 
as now scattered among all people, from one end of 
the earth unto the other, yet as distinct among the 
nations when thus scattered as they were when taken 
out and selected from all nations and placed by them- 
selves in one land ? Supposing you never to have 
heard of the existence of the Scriptures, or to have 
read a word of prophecy, what name would instantly 
rise to the tip of your tongue in replying to such a 
question ? 

Inf. The Jews. 

Chr. Again. What nation, after being stormed in 
all the strongholds successively of its own land, was 
then cooped uj) and concentred in one city in a siege 
the straitness of which compelled mothers to eat their 
own children, by a nation whose emblem was the 
Eagle, of a fierce countenance, regarding neither the 
person of the old, nor showing favor to the young? 

Inf. You mean, of course, the Romans: but the 
Romans conquered a hundred nations besides the 
Jews. 

Chr. J^ot one in this way. 

Inf. Carthage. 

Chr. Rome in her wars with Carthage was an 
Italian state, separated from Carthage by merely the 
breadth of the Mediterranean ; Carthage was not a 



62 KOME AND JUD^A. 

" land," but a commercial Yenice. Carthage liad no 
strongholds throughout all her lands ; Carthage was 
defended by mercenaries and not a race ; in brief, the 
Phoenician race and people of Carthage liave for two 
thousand years been utterly extinct. So far from 
being scattered among all nations, not a Carthaginian 
pretending to identity of any description with those 
who fell before Rome, could, if we instituted the 
minutest search, be discovered from one end of the 
earth to the other. If we examine the catalogue 
of the Roman Provinces — Spain, Portugal, France, 
Britain, the Rhine frontiers, the Cisalpine, the 
Danubian States, Northern Africa, Anatolia, Egypt, 
and the Euphratic Provinces, in the conquest or 
national catastrophe of none of them do we find the 
following distinctive ''signs:" 

A land of one race — A land studded with for- 
tresses of " high and fenced walls," manned by 
that race, into which they had thrown themselves, 
and in which they trusted, all of which are in suc- 
cession beleaguered and stormed by the enemy — 
A siege of unparalleled, of the most appalling se- 
verity, of the whole race in one spot — A " plucking 
off" of the race from the land — A depopulation 
from being as " the stars in heaven for multitude," to 
being " a few" — A scattering of these few from one end 
of the earth to the other- — Centuries of " a trembling 
heart, of failing eyes, of sorrow of mind, of the rest- 
less foot, of being only oppressed and crushed alway." 
Yet thouo;li " few," and '' scattered " and " crushed 
alway," never destroyed, or dying out, or amalga- 
mated with any of the nations among whom they are 



ROME AND JVDMA. 63 

scattered. But remaining always an astonishment, 
a proverb, and a by- word, in every age and country 
of their dispersion. No series of events in the history 
of any other nation with whom Rome came into 
collision bears even a remote parallel to the " signs " 
here laid down as the destinies of the Jewish people 
on their rejection of the Messiah. But applying to 
no other race or nation whatever, they do most 
strikingly apply to the Jews. 

For the Jews were one race — Palestine, their land, 
was the land of one race — Palestine under the 
Romans, as under the Canaanites, was studded with 
cities of '^ gates and high and fenced walls " — Into 
these cities the race in their national rising against the 
Roman supremacy threw themselves, '' they trusted 
in them" — One by one these cities were stormed with 
a mercilessness that spared neither youth nor age. 
The race fell back, as one body, into Jerusalem — The 
Roman eagles followed, and Jerusalem became the 
" carcass of the nation" — In the course of the siege, 
each terrible detail of the prophetic denunciation 
was amply and notoriously verified — Jerusalem was 
stormed, and 1,100,000 of the race perished at one 
blow. The race was "plucked out" from the land, 
every individual of it being prohibited, under penalty 
of death, from coming even in sight of their once 
" holy and beautiful city." Do you admit the truth 
of these historical statements ? 

Inf. They are too well known to be contravened. 

Che. How many centuries have since elapsed ? 

Inf. Eighteen. 

Chb. Throughout these eighteen centuries is there 



64: JUDICIAL PROPHECY THE JEWS. 

any race which has combined in itself and destinies 
these '^signs'' or characteristics: 1. Few in num- 
ber. 2. Scattered from one end of the earth to the 
other. 3. Never resting, or living in any one conn- 
try as their patria or home. 4. Oppressed and 
crushed alway under " a plague of long continuance.^' 
5. Being " an astonishment and a proverb among all 
nations," climates, religions, and languages, Christian 
and Heathen, without distinction ; alike among those 
who know, and those who have never heard of the 
Scriptures. Suppose me to ask this question of 
ninety-nine out of a hundred people in any part of 
the world, what would be the certain reply ? 

Inf. I do not contend against patent facts — the 
Jews. 

Chr. Suppose me again to ask, " Do any other 
people besides the Jews unite these characteristics ?" 
would one in a hundred find it possible to suggest 
even the supposition of any other? 

Inf. Proceed. 

Chr. We have, then, in connection with the his- 
tory of a certain race a certain number of facts ex- 
tending over so many centuries. Fifteen, or, as 
I^ewman avers, eight centuries before the starting 
point of these facts, we have each of them, not 
vaguely and generally, but definitely and specifically 
written down as part of a great whole, — call it judg- 
ment, destiny, or what you please, — denounced as 
certain to befall the Jewish race in the event of their 
rejecting a Messiah calling himself by the '^glorious 
and fearful name of the Lord thy God." To the 
Jewish race alone were these addressed; given and 



JUDICIAL PROPHECY THE JEWS. 65 

consigned as part of what the race itself have ever, 
from the moment of their delivery, regarded as the 
Oracles of God. Without Scripture or Prophecy the 
whole world. Christian and Heathen alike, going by 
the palpable, universal facts before their eyes, put 
their finger on the Jews as the only race in which 
such and such signs are realized and combined. 
Without consulting the after facts of history, we, at 
the same time, put our finger on certain writings 
which, fifteen centuries before these facts commenced, 
specify the facts, the signs, the contingency, and the 
race. These writings name the Jews as the race in 
whom certain '' signs" were to be fulfilled. Three 
thousand years after they are written the whole 
world witnesses that in the Jews, and of all nations 
the Jews only, these signs are so strangely and pro- 
minently fulfilled, that by them the Jew is distin- 
guished from any other nation of the world. The 
" signs" predicted are literally the " signs" by which 
the Jew is known to be of that race the whole world 
over. The " signs" cannot be separated from the 
Jew, nor the Jew from the "signs." 

Inf. It is certainly very singular. 

Chr. Now, did Nature predict all this in writing? 
were these writings from Nature ? 

Inf. No. 

Ohr. Something or some being did predict them 
thus in writing. Explain who or what. 

Inf. It is not easy to explain such very strong 
coincidences between present facts and these ancient 
vaticinations. 

Chk. How! not explain a broad, outstanding. 



66 JUDICIAL PROPHECY THE JEWS. 

pyramidic fact of history ? You, who insist that a 
Christian should explain every thing from the high- 
est mystery to the humblest precept in his religion, 
not able to explain a fact which confronts infidelity 
and false philosophies — the philosophies that believe 
^Nature to be God — in every century of time and 
every country of the globe ! Not explain a Jew ! 
You can and do explain the Assyrian, the Egyptian, 
the Greek, the Roman, the German, the Briton ; 
why not explain the most striking, the most durable, 
the most arresting of them all — the Jew? In Homer, 
in Livy, in Gildas, in Bede, you find not one syllable 
predictive of the destinies of the Greek, the Roman, 
the Briton, or the Teuton, — all great and powerful 
nations, — three thousand years after the date of their 
compositions. But in these Scriptures, written three 
thousand years ago, is described the history of the 
Jews as they are before our eyes at this moment ; so 
described in deep, unmistakable characteristics, that 
it is easier by them to detect a Jew than it is by any 
other signs to detect an individual of any other race 
in the world. What bafiies infidelity here? IS^ot 
surely lack of materials. There is ancient, here is 
modern Palestine ; there are the pre-dispersion writ- 
ings, here are the post-dispersion facts. Throw aside 
the Scriptures altogether ; proceed on Greek, Roman 
European authorities, by the world, by the popular, 
the universal voice from England to Japan, and ex- 
plain the Jew. Why, for instance, are they a " prov- 
erb" in every one's mouth? Why, after eighteen 
centuries, during which, according tp the science of 
the Malthusian Economy, they ought to have peopled 



JUDIOIA.L PROPHECY THE JEWS. 67 

every land of their sojourning, are they still but " few" 
in number? Why do they still remain " scattered?" 
What cause, when union is strength, has prevented 
them from uniting their scatterings? What has 
barred them iTom Palestine, yet barring them, still 
keeps them also " Jews ?" AVhy, for so many cen- 
turies, by Koman, by barbarian, by Christian, by 
Islamite, by Pagan, have they been " oppressed and 
crushed alway," and, being so, why different from 
every oppressed nation, instead of, at times, attempt- 
ing to vindicate their exemption from the "wonderful 
plague of long continuance," have they, since the 
crucifixion, ever been, under Pagan, Christian, and 
Islamite, the race of " the trembling heart ;" they 
whose history, before "their rejection of the great 
and glorious Name," teems with heroes, compared to 
whom the warriors of Greece and Rome were children 
in prowess and mercenaries in spirit? How is it 
when, even now, in our own England, a few Jews 
emerge from the mass, the mass itself remains a 
"hissing and a scorn" unto the nations? Has Infidel- 
ity no explanation for this phenomenon which has 
already lasted eighteen centuries ? 

Inf. I have never met a satisfactory explanation 
of all these facts : some, I think, may be accounted 
for on political, others on reactionary grounds ; but 
I admit much would yet remain beyond my present 
power of solution. 

Chr. Add, the only visible Being in their history 
who ever presumed to appropriate to Himself " the 
glorious and fearful Name of the Lord thy God," was 
for that very reason crucified by them ; yet Him 



68 JUDICIAL PROPHECY THE JEWS. 

they are compelled to see acknowledged by an ever- 
widening Church of all peoples and languages as the 
" only name given to man whereby he can be saved." 
Wherever they wander — the Crucified still confronts 
them ; in every nation where they appear, they are 
doomed to look, in some aspect or other, " on Him 
whom they pierced ;" and this very Crucifixion was 
to be, as their writings declare, the cardinal point or 
hinge on which, for good or evil, were to turn their 
temporal and spiritual destinies as a nation. If you 
questioned me why I could not be an Infidel, I would 
point to the first Jew I met and say, " That man's 
liistory makes it too hazardous." 

Inf. I feel perplexed but not alarmed by my ina- 
bility to satisfy myself as to the causes which isolate 
the Jews from all nations. 

Chr. We Christians, on the other hand, feel that 
our souls cannot afford to dispense wdth a decision in 
this matter. Here is a Power which has absolutely 
controlled both material and human nature — a land 
and a race — for eighteen hundred years, in complete 
accordance with certain Scriptures which this very 
race have from the first constantly maintained to 
have been delivered by this Power fifteen hundred 
years previously to their legislator and Church. But 
everywhere these Scriptures address themselves also 
to us, and that with promises and menaces equal, at 
least, in their solemn import to those addressed of old 
to the Jews. Now, if I cannot explain the peculiar 
history of Palestine and of the Jews otherwise than 
by admitting the conclusion which that history logi- 
cally forces upon me, — the Divine inspiration of the 



JUDICIAL PROPHECY THE JEWS. 69 

Pentateuch, — I should be doing violence to my judg- 
ment and intellect in remaining a Skeptic instead of 
becoming a Christian. On the lowest grounds of 
self-consideration I am not prepared, by refusing 
credence to his Word, to enter into conflict with a 
Being, if not of almighty, certainly of such power as 
Nature at present cannot cope withal. Here is the 
evidence of three thousand years that she cannot. 
Had I no other case, therefore, than this, of the 
written judicial sentence thus executed on the Jews, 
submitted to my reason, I should feel it far too unsafe 
to be an Infidel ; for here is irrefragable proof that 
disobedience to the requisitions or revealed com- 
mands of this Power cannot be perpetrated with 
impunity. But knowing this to be only one of very 
many instances of the irresistibility of this Power, I 
am compelled to infer the infidelity which ignores 
its very existence to be in the highest degree irra- 
tional as well as dangerous. Observe also that in 
the same page^ Newman writes, " Of the prophecies 
which concern various nations, some of them are 
remarkably verified." This admission alone over- 
throws Infidelity in the gross. The power of proph- 
ecy, and the fact of many prophecies on a national 
scale fulfilled being thus conceded, the Infidel aban- 
dons the principle, retaining only the profession of 
Ifindelity. This is again irrational. I am thus, so 
far as the exercise of Intellect is concerned, left no 
other alternative than, even on the ground of the 
Pentateuchal prophecies alone, to accept the Divine 
original of both the Scriptures and the Christian 

1 Phases of Faith, p. 115. 



70 PRECAL PROPHECY THE PSALMS. 

faith. "The polemical weapons, therefore, forged 
out of the Old Prophets" for the service of our 
Christian Creed still remain, contrary to I^ewman's 
assertion, armor too potent for infidelity to encounter 
in the lists of right reason. In attempting it, Infi- 
delity, with regard to some prophecies, ceases to be 
infidelity, and with regard to others, confesses it has 
no solution to propose of facts it finds impossible to 
deny. May we not be excused in deeming such In- 
fidelity Imbecility ? 

But you may be more successful in your next ob- 
jection. 

Inf. I will leave the Pentateuch, then, and pro- 
ceed to the Psalms. The statement of Newman is, 
"As to the Messianic prophecies, I began to be 
pressed with the difficulty of proving against the 
Jews that ' Messiah was to suffer.' The Psalms 
generally adduced for this purpose can in no way 
be fixed on Messiah."^ Now, the Saviour in whom 
you believe is a Crucified Saviour, " Jesus Christ 
and Him Crucified." The great emblem of your re- 
ligion is the instrument of his suffering — the Cross : 
it surmounts your material churches, and is inscribed 
in baptism on the brow of every member of your 
spiritual Church: but this statement alleges that the 
Psalms in no way indicate a suffering Messiah. If 
this be correct, the connection between the Psalms 
and the Crucified Saviour whom you worship must 
be entirely imaginary ; they form, in fact, neither 
part of your Scriptures, nor evidence of the truth of 
your religion. 

1 Phases of Faith, p. 113. 



PRECAL PROPHECY THE PSALMS. 71 

Chr. Against Newman's assertion I place that 
judgment of the Christian Chnrch which regards the 
whole Book of Psalms as one great Precal Prophecy 
of the Messiah ; a Messiah both Suffering and Tri- 
umphant. I shall, I fear, weary you if I attempt to 
read consecutively out of these spiritual songs of the 
Church those passages which refer to Jesus Christ 
in either his capacity as the great sacrifice for sin. 
Himself made the curse for us, and, as such, bearing 
the sins of the whole world in his own body, or as 
the Triumphant Conqueror, by the consummation of 
such sacrifice, of death, the grave, and hell. 

Inf. They cannot, I think, from this statement of 
Newman's, be so many as you anticipate. 

Chr. I must beg your patience, then, while I cite 
such of them as will enable your judgment to form 
its own conclusion. 

" Why do the heathen rage, and the people im- 
agine a vain thing? The kings of the earth set 
themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, 
against the Lord, and against his anointed." ^ " My 
heart was glad and my glory rejoiced ; my flesh also 
shall rest in hope. For why ? Thou shalt not leave 
my soul in hell, neither shalt thou suffer thine holy 
one to see corruption, thou shalt show me the path 
of life : in thy presence is the fulness of joy, and 
at thy right hand there is pleasure for evermore." ^ 
" Keep me as an apple of an eye. Hide me under the 
shadow of thy wings, from the ungodly that trouble 
me. Mine enemies compass me round about to take 
away my soul. Defend my soul from the ungodly 
^ Ps. ii. 2 Ps. xvi. 



72 PRECAL PROPHEOY^ THE PSALMS. 

which is a sword of thine ; from the men of thy hand 
and from the evil world. I will behold thy presence 
in righteousness : and when I wake up after thy like- 
ness I shall be satisfied with it."^ "They pierced my 
hands and my feet ; I may tell all my bones : they 
stand staring and looking upon me. They part my 
garments among them : and cast lots upon my ves- 
ture. All the ends of the world shall remember 
themselves and be turned unto the Lord; and all 
the kindreds of the nations shall worship before Him. 
All they that go down into the dust shall kneel 
before him; and no man hath quickened his own 
soul. My seed shall serve him : they shall be counted 
unto the Lord for a generation. They shall come, 
and the heavens shall declare his righteousness : unto 
a people that shall be born, whom the Lord hath 
made." ^ " Though I walk through the valley and 
shadow of death, I will fear no evil : for Thou art 
with me ; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me. 
Thou hast anointed my head with oil ; thy loving- 
kindness and thy mercy shall follow me all the days 
of my life : and I will dwell in the house of the Lord 
forever."^ " Into thy hands I commend my spirit: 
I am become like as a broken vessel. I have heard 
the blasphemy of the multitude : and fear is on every 
side, whilst they conspire together against me, and 
take their counsel to take away my life. But my 
hope hath been in thee, O God : I have said. Thou 
art my God. Thou hast shown me marvellous great 
kindness in a great city."^ "The Lord bringeth the 

1 Ps. svii. 2 Ps. xxii. ^ Ps. xxiii. * Ps. xxxi. 



PRECAL PROPHECY THE PSALMS. 73 

counsel of the heathen to naught : and maketh the 
devices of the people to be of none effect, and casteth 
out the counsels of princes. The counsel of the 
Lord shall endure forever, and the thoughts of his 
heart from generation to generation." ^ " My soul shall 
make her boast in the Lord : the humble shall hear 
thereof, and be glad. Great are the troubles of the 
righteous: but the Lord delivereth him out of all. 
He keepeth all his bones ; so that none of them is 
broken." ^ " Plead thou my cause, O Lord, with them 
that strive with me : say unto my soul, I am thy 
salvation. Let them be as the dust before the 
wind : and the angel of the Lord scattering them. 
False witnesses did rise up : they laid to my charge 
things that I knew not. They rewarded me evil for 
good. They gaped upon me with their mouths ; 
avenge thou my cause, my God, and my Lord. 
Blessed be the Lord, who hath pleasure in the pros- 
perity of his servant."^ "I waited patiently for the 
Lord : and he inclined unto me, and heard my call- 
ing. He brought me also out of the horrible pit, and 
set ray feet upon the rock. He hath put a new song 
into my mouth : even a thanksgiving unto our God. 
Great are the wondrous works which thou hast done. 
Sacrifice and meat-offering, thou wouldest not : but 
mine ears hast thou opened. Burnt-offerings, and 
offerings for sin, hast thou not required : then said 
I, Lo, I come. In the volume of thy book it is 
written of me, that I should fulfil thy will, O God : 
I am content to do it."^ " All mine enemies whisper 

* Ps. xxxiii. 2 Ps^ xxxiv. ^ pg, xxxv. * Ps. xl. 

4 



74 PRECAL PROPHECY THE PSALMS. 

together against me : even against me do they ima- 
gine this evil. Let the sentence of guiltiness pro- 
ceed against him : and now that he lieth, let him 
rise up no more. Yea, even mine own familiar 
friend, whom I trusted: who did also eat of my 
bread, hath laid great wait for me. But be thou 
merciful unto me, O Lord : raise thou me up again, 
and I shall reward them. Thou shalt set me before 
thy face forever."^ ''Like as the hart desireth the 
water-brooks : so longeth my soul after Thee, O Lord. 
My soul is athirst for God, yea, even for the living 
God : when shall I come to appear before the presence 
of God? My tears have been my meat day and 
night : while they daily say unto me, Where is now 
thy God ? My God, my soul is vexed within me : 
all thy waves and storms are gone over me. I will 
say unto the Lord of my strength. Why hast thou 
forgotten me? My bones are smitten asunder as 
with a sword : whilst my enemies that trouble me 
cast me in the teeth. Why art thou so vexed, O my 
soul: and why art thou so disquieted within me? 
O put thy trust in God : for I will yet thank him, 
which is the help of my countenance, and my God."^ 
" Save me, O God, for thy name's sake, and deliver 
me in thy strength. For strangers are risen up 
against me : and tyrants, which have not God before 
their eyes, seek after my soul."^ " Hear my prayer, 
O Lord: and hide not thyself from my petition. 
Tearfulness and trembling are come upon me : and 
a horrible dread hath overwhelmed me. It is not 

» Ps. xli. 2 Ps, xUi. s ps^ liy^ 



PRECAL PROPHECY ^THE PSALMS. 75 

an open enemy that hath done me this dishonor, 
neither was it mine adversary that did magnify him- 
self against me : bnt it was even thou, my companion, 
my guide, and mine own familiar friend. We took 
sweet counsel together, and walked in the house of 
God as friends. He laid his hands upon such as be 
at peace with him, and he brake his covenant. 
The words of his mouth were softer than butter, 
having war in his heart : his words were smoother 
than oil, and yet be they very swords."^ ^'Be mer- 
ciful unto me, O God, for man goeth about to devour 
me. They daily mistake my words : all that they 
imagine is to do me evil : they hold all together and 
keep themselves close, and mark my steps, when 
they lie in wait for my soul. In God have I put my 
trust, I will not fear what man can do unto me. 
Thou hast delivered my soul from death, and my 
feet from falling : that I may walk before God in 
the light of the living."^ "Be merciful unto me, O 
God, be merciful unto me, for my soul trusteth in 
thee. My soul is among lions. I lie among the 
children of men, that are set on fire : whose teeth 
are spears and arrows, and their tongue a sharp 
sword. I will give thanks unto thee, O Lord, among 
the people : and I will sing unto thee among the 
nations. For the greatness of thy mercy reacheth 
unto the heavens: and thy truth unto the clouds."^ 
"Deliver me from mine enemies, O God : defend me 
from them that rise up against me. O deliver me 
from the wicked doers, and save me from the blood- 

1 Ps. Iv. 2 Ps. Ivi. 3 Ps. ivii. 



76 PRECAL PROPHECY THE PSALMS. 

thirsty men. For lo, they lie waiting for my soul: 
slay them not, lest my people forget it : but scatter 
them abroad among the people. I will sing of thy 
power, for thou hast been my refuge and defence in 
the day of my trouble."^ "Hear my prayer, O God, 
give ear unto my pi-ayer. Thou, O Lord, hast heard 
my desires : and hast given an heritage to them that 
fear thy name. Thou shalt grant the king a long 
life : that his years may endure throughout all gener- 
ations. He shall dwell before God forever."^ "My 
soul thirsteth for thee, my flesh also longeth after 
thee : in a barren and dry land where no water is. 
Under the shadow of thy wings will I rejoice. My 
soul hangeth on thee: thy right hand hath upholden 
me. They that seek the hurt of my soul shall go 
under the earth." ^ " Save me, O God, for the waters 
are come in, even unto my soul. They that hate me 
withoat a cause are more than the hairs of my head : 
they that are mine enemies, and would destroy me 
guiltless, are mighty. For thy sake have I suffered 
reproof: shame hath covered my face. I am become 
a stranger unto my brethren : even an alien unto my 
mother's children. For the zeal of thine house hath 
even eaten me up : and the rebukes of them that re- 
buked thee have fallen upon me. Hear me, O Lord, 
in the multitude of thy mercy : even in the truth of 
thy salvation. Let not the water-flood drown me, 
neither let the deep swallow me up : and let not the 
pit shut her mouth upon me. Thy rebuke hath 
broken my heart : I am full of heaviness : I looked 

1 Ps. lix. 3 Ps. ixL 8 Ps. ixiii. 



PEECAL PROPHECY THE PSALMS. 77 

for some to have pity on me, but there was no man, 
neither found I any to comfort me. They gave me 
gall to eat : and when I was thirsty they gave me 
vinegar to drink. Let the things that should have 
been for their wealth be unto them an occasion for 
falling. Let their eyes be blinded, that they see not: 
and ever bow thou down their backs. Let their 
habitation be void : and let no man dwell in their 
tents, for they persecute him whom thou hast 
smitten."^ "When I receive the congregation, I 
shall judge according to right. The earth is weak 
and all the inhabitants thereof : I bear up the pillars 
of it. All the horns of the ungodly also will I break : 
and the horns of the righteous shall be exalted."^ 
'' Bow down thine ear, O Lord, and hear me. Preserve 
thou my soul, for I am holy. Great is thy mercy to- 
wards me : thou hast delivered my soul from the 
nethermost hell. Give thy strength unto thy servant, 
and help the son of thy handmaid."^ " O Lord God 
of my salvation, I have cried day and night unto 
thee, for my soul is full of trouble : and my life 
draweth nigh unto helL Free among the dead, like 
unto them that are wounded, and lie in the grave : 
thou hast laid me in tliQ lowest pit: in a place of 
darkness, and in the deep. Thine indignation lieth 
hard upon me, and thou hast vexed me with all 
thy storms. I am so fast in prison, that I cannot 
get forth. Dost thou show wonders among the 
dead; or shall the dead rise up again and praise 
thee? Shall thy loving-kindness be showed in the 

^ Ps. Ixix. 2 Ps. Ixxv. ' Ps. Ixxxvi. 



78 PRECAL PKOPHECY— THE PSALMS. 

grave, or thy faithfulness in destruction ? Shall thy 
wondrous works be known in the dark, and thy 
righteousness in the land where all things are forgot ? 
Unto thee, O Lord, have I cried, and early shall my 
prayer come before thee."^ "Thou spakest some- 
times in visions to thy saints and saidst, I have laid 
help upon one that is mighty, I have exalted one 
chosen out of the people. I have found David my 
servant ; with my holy oil have I anointed him. 
My truth and my mercy shall be with him. I will 
set his dominion also in the sea, and his right hand 
in the floods. He shall call me. Thou art my father : 
my God, and my strong salvation. And I will make 
him, my first-born, higher than the kings of the 
earth. His seed also will I make to endure forever, 
and his throne as the day of heaven. But thou hast 
abhorred and forsaken thine Anointed: thou hast 
put out his glory, and cast his throne down to the 
ground : the days of his youth hast thou shortened, 
and covered his face with dishonor. Remember, 
Lord, how I do bear in my bosom the rebukes of 
many people : whilst thine enemies have blasphemed 
thee and slandered the footsteps of thine Anointed." ^ 
"Hear my prayer, O Lord: O hear me, and that 
right soon. Mine enemies revile me all day long : 
and they that are mad upon me are sworn together 
against me. For I have eaten ashes as it were 
bread : and mingled my drink with weeping, and that 
because of thine indignation and wrath : for thou 
hast taken me up, and cast me down. He brought 

1 Ps. Ixxxviii. ^ Ps. Ixxxix. 



PKKCAL PROPHECY THE PSALMS. 79 

me down in my journey: and shortened my days. 
Thou, Lord, in the beginning hast laid the foundation 
of the earth : and the heavens are the work of thy 
hands. They shall perish, but thou slialt endure. 
Thou art the same, and thy years shall not fail."^ 
" Hold not thy tongue, O God of my praise : for the 
mouth of the ungodly is open upon me : they com- 
passed me about with words of hatred, and fought 
against me without a cause. For the love I had 
tmto them, lo, they take now my contrary part : but 
I give myself unto prayer. Thus have they rew^arded 
me evil for good, and hatred for mj good-will. But 
deal thou with me according to thy name. O de- 
liver me, for I am poor and helpless, and my heart 
is wounded within me. I go hence like the shadow 
that departeth, and am driven away as the grass- 
hopper. I became also a reproach unto them : they 
that looked upon me shaked their heads. Help me, 
O Lord my God : O save me according to thy mercy : 
and they shall know, how that this is thy hand, and 
that thou. Lord, hast done it. Though they curse, yet 
bless thou."^ "The Lord said unto my Lord: Sit 
thou on my right hand, until I make thine enemies 
thy footstool. The Lord sware, and will not repent. 
Thou art a priest forever after the order of Melchis- 
edec. The Lord upon thy right hand shall wound 
even kings in the day of his wrath. He shall judge 
among the heathen. He shall drink of the brook in 
the way : therefore shall he lift up the head."^ " The 
Lord is on my side : I will not fear what man can do 

1 Ps. cii. 2 ps, cix. 3 ps, ex. 



80 PRECAL PROPHECY THE PSALMS. 

unto me. All nations compassed me ronnd, but in 
the name of the Lord will I destroy them. The 
Lord is my strength and my song, and is become 
my salvation. Open me the gates of righteousness: 
the righteous shall enter into it. The same stone 
which the builders refused is become the head stone 
of the corner. This is the Lord's doing, and it is 
marvellous in our eyes. This is the day which the 
Lord hath made; we will rejoice and be glad there- 
in."^ "I cried unto the Lord with my voice: yea, 
even unto the Lord did I make my supplication. 
When my spirit was in heaviness thou knewest my 
path : in the way wherein I walked have they privily 
laid a snare for me. I looked also upon my right 
hand, and saw there was no man that would know 
me. I had no place to flee unto, and no man cared 
for my soul. Bring my soul out of prison, that I 
may give thanks unto thy ITame : which thing, if 
thou wilt grant me, then shall the righteous resort 
unto my company."^ ''Hearken unto me for thy 
truth and righteousness' sake. For the enemy hath 
persecuted my soul : he hath smitten my life down 
to the ground : he hath laid me in the darkness as 
the men that have been long dead. O let me hear 
thy loving-kindness betimes in the morning, for in 
thee is my trust." ^ 

The remaining Psalms are paeans of victory sung 
by the Church to Christ triumphant after his passion. 
" I will magnify thee, O Lord my King, and I will 
praise thy name for ever and ever. Great is the 

^ Ps. cxviii. 2 pg, cxUi. s Ps. cxUii. 



PRECAL PROPHECY THE PSALMS. 81 

Lord and marvellous, worthy to be praised, there is 
no end of his greatness. One generation shall praise 
thy works nnto another, and declare thy power : the 
memorial of thy abundant kindness shall be shown, 
and men shall sing of thy righteousness. Thy king- 
dom is an everlasting kingdom, and thy dominion 
endureth through all ages. Thou sendest forth thy 
commandment upon earth, and thy word runneth 
very swiftly. O praise the Lord of heaven, praise 
him in the height: Praise him, all ye angels of his! 
Praise him, all ye host. O sing unto the Lord a new 
song ; let the saints be joyful in glory, let them 
rejoice in their beds. Praise him in his holiness. 
Praise him in the firmament of his power. Praise 
him in his noble acts. Praise him according to his 
excellent greatness : let everything that hath breath 
praise the Lord." 

Int. Your statement I understand to be that all 
these passages from one portion of the Scriptures 
only — the Psalms — are prophetic of Christ in either 
his sufi*ering or glorified capacity. 

Chr. Precisely. They are the cries, prayers, and 
supplications to God, of Jesus Christ in his state of 
humiliation and passion : of Jesus Christ in his hu- 
man capacity ; of the man Jesus Christ tried in all 
things, and feeling all these trials as bitterly as we 
ourselves, to his and our Father in heaven. They 
are the precal prophecy of both the inward and out- 
ward sufferings of the Messiah. 

L^F. But how is it that only a few comparatively 
of these are in the Scriptures of the New Testament 
quoted as applying to Christ ? 

4-- 



82 PRECAL PROPHECY THE PSALMS. 

Chr. Why should more be quoted? The writings 
of the Kew Testament were addressed exchisively 
to the Church ; that is, to persons ah-eady baptized 
and instructed in the doctrines and discipline of the 
faith of Christ. The New Testament was never 
intended to communicate the great truths of the 
Gospel for the first time to the persons to whom its 
various parts were addressed, but, as 'Saint Peter 
observes of his own Epistles, to remind them of the 
truths in which they had been already established. 
Most, indeed, of the Epistles are written, not with 
the intention of originally imparting the Gospel 
doctrines, but of correcting local errors in this or that 
Church, by bringing them briefly but decisively to 
the test of that standard of the faith already at their 
first preaching delivered by the Apostles, as they 
themselves had received it from Christ, once for all 
to the saints. The invariable method adopted by the 
Apostles in dealing with false conceptions of Chris- 
tianity, is to recall the Church in which they pre- 
vailed to its original instruction, which appears to 
have been, in every Church of Apostolic foundation, 
uniformly one and the same. Allusions, therefore, 
to doctrines universally taught, known, and accepted, 
abound in the New Testament, though the doctrines 
themselves are only explicitly declared, when some 
error directly contravening them required them to be 
so. But in most instances an allusion or reference 
sufficed. And so with prophecy. The quotation 
of one or two passages was enough to remind the 
Church of the whole catena of prophecies with which 
they were connected. " Unto the word of prophecy 



PRECAL PROPHECY THE PSALMS. 83 

ye do well that ye take lieed,"^ says St. Peter, speak- 
ing thus of this prophetical instruction communi- 
cated to, and received by, the Church in its aggre- 
gate and mass. 

Inf. But how, again, is it, seeing these Psalms 
were originally the productions of David, Solomon, 
Asaph, and others, that you appropriate their ex- 
pression as if they were literally intended to be, and 
were indeed, the language of Jesus Christ Himself 
in his incarnate humiliation? 

Chr. Every prophecy or type in the Scriptures 
bears only in its secondary sense on the agent of its 
action, or the medium of its delivery, be it Abel, 
Noah, Abraham, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Joshua, Da- 
vid, Solomon, Jonah, or any other representative of 
Christ to the then Church. Christ Himself is always 
its primary and permanent sense. So also with the 
Church itself. Its types, symbols, and ritual on 
earth are the mere secondaries or reflections of the 
Church in heaven. The substances of the Jewish 
Church were shadows of ours ; our substances, again, 
are shadows of the future, yet at the same time the 
original Church, in heaven — that Zion and kingdom 
of God prepared for his redeemed before tlie founda- 
tions of the world. As the whole form, therefore, of 
the Church on earth follows, not precedes, or only 
precedes in reference to us, the form of the Church 
in heaven, so Christ Himself, its Head, precedes in 
his own charcter all the prophetic types and delinea- 
tions of that character, given through earthly repre- 

1 2 Pet. i. 19. 



84 PRECAL PROPHECY THE PSALMS. 

sentatives to mankind. As we look, therefore, throngli 
nature up to nature's God, we look through the 
Scriptures up to Christ as the sole object whom all 
the Scriptures, and every thing in the Scriptures, in 
its degree and kind, were pre-designed to present to 
our souls. Whether, therefore. He is termed, in his 
proper character, Jesus Christ, or in one of his many 
typical characters, — Israel, David, the Angel of the 
Covenant, the Rock, the Paschal Lamb, the Living 
Fountain, — He alone it is to whom in substance we 
look in every form and mode of the revelations of 
the Scriptures. The persons or the things through 
which such revelations are made to us, we consider 
as mere veilings or unveilings of Him the Substance, 
the Cause and End of their use and assumption. 

Inf. This infers, of course, the pre-existence of 
Christ ? 

Chr. Certainly: the eternal Godhead of Christ. 
N"ow, are these Psalms which we read expressive of 
suffering or not ? 

Inf. I had no idea of the intensity of suffering 
which they do most forcibly express until I heard 
them read consecutively. 

Chr. Of inward or spiritual suffering they are to 
my mind inexpressibly painful emanations and out- 
bursts. The character they portray is this, — a man 
of constant devotions, of public and solitary com- 
munions with God, of absolute and limitless faith 
and trust in God, and in God only ; ever in prayer, 
in many agonies ; betrayed by a familiar friend, 
deserted by all, falsely accused, delivered to the 
heathen, shamed, dishonored, mocked, blasphemed, 



PRECU. PBOPPIECY THE PSALMS. 85 

crucified ; in his expiring moments given gall to eat 
and vinegar to drink ; dead, interred, consigned to 
darkness and the grave. Is this suffering ? 

Inf. Who can doubt its being extreme suffering? 

Chr. Is the description of such a person as this 
contained in these Psalms? Do the Psalms them- 
selves supply ns with the description of this char- 
acter ? 

Inf. Proceed. 

Chr. The Psalms of the Passion, then, are Prophe- 
cies of the most profound and grievous suffering. 

Inf. But nevertheless they may apply to man 
only, and not to Messiah, except as mere man, there- 
fore not to your Christ, who is both God and man. 

Chr. These very prophecies declare of this very 
same Sufferer that, after being thus buried, as one 
long dead, laid in the lowest pit, in the nethermost 
hell, in the place of darkness and in the deep. He 
should not see corruption ; He should not be left in 
hell ; He should lead captive the captivity of hell ; 
He should ascend on high ; He should receive gifts 
for men ; He should jeign over the heathen ; the 
nations of the living and the dead should alike wor- 
ship and bow down to Him ; He should sit on the 
throne of God himself till every enemy of Himself 
and kingdom were subdued unto Him ; that his seed 
should be eternal, and prayer be ever daily made to 
Him. Have you ever heard of more than one in 
whom it has ever been pretended that these extra- 
ordinary facts of terrestrial suffering and celestial 
aggrandizement have been verified? 

Inf. No, I have not. 



^6 PRECAL PROPHECY THE PSA:LMS. 

Chr. Who is that one ? 

Inf. The one whom you Christians affirm to be 
and believe in as the Messiah. But the truth is, 
these prophecies, contrary to Newman's assertion, 
are so plain, that out of them alone a Messiah might 
be origmated ; they might themselves be the cause 
of their own verifications. 

Chr. We wdll presently examine the possibility of 
your hypothesis. We in our Christian creed affirm, 
that the series of suflerings which Jesus Christ un- 
derwent, and which terminated in his death and 
burial, were literally the same with those predicted 
to befall this great suffering Character in the Psalms ; 
and in support of such affirmation we adduce per- 
fectly incontrovertible historic evidence, such as In- 
fidels themselves, up to the fact of the Burial, do not 
dispute or impugn. 

Inf. It is possible, supposing such evidence incon- 
trovertible, that Christ Himself so acted as to bring 
his life and its final incidents into conformity with 
these Messianic prophecies. 

Chr. That is, I think, as you will find, a desperate 
supposition. Let us first deal with Newman, who 
asserts these Psalms possess no character of Messianic 
Suffering at all. Can such assertion be admitted, 
seeing that in both their Suffering and Triumphant 
expressions they most clearly apply to one and the 
same Person ; and if to the Messiah in his Triumph- 
ant, most certainly to the same Messiah in his Suffer- 
ing aspect ? 

Inf. If they apply to Messiah at all, they certainly 
imply a Suffering Messiah. But, granting Jesus 



Pt?ECAL PROPHECY THE PSALMS. 87 

Christ to have fulfilled the '' suffering " part of these 
prophecies, that fulfilment alone will not, by your 
own statement, constitute him the Messiah ; for the 
triumph and the suffering must be realized by the 
same person ; and unless the former be as amply 
verified as the latter in his Person, then He is not the 
Messiah. That, I think, is clear. 

Chr. Quite ; and our faith is that in Jesus Christ 
both were thus verified ; we therefore, after the article 
of his burial and descent into hell, proceed to declare 
in the Creed — the same Jesus Christ " the third day 
rose again according to the Scriptures, and ascended 
into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of the 
Father. And he shall come again, with glory, to 
judge both the quick and the dead, whose kingdom 
shall have no end." Christ being man, might, you 
suppose it possible, from enthusiasm, religious mono- 
mania, or some sublime disease of the mind, have set 
Himself resolutely to fulfil the prophecies which in- 
dicated the successive steps in the concluding suffer- 
ings of the Messiah. 

Inf. The human mind is subject to the sublimest 
as well as the most degrading diseases : under the in- 
fluence of such diseases death loses all its terrors ; 
it assumes positive attractions. The noblest actions 
also of ancient and modern patriots show us the 
existence of a state of mind which, equally with such 
diseases, spurns the fear of death. Whether Christ, 
therefore, labored under a Messianic delusion in 
reference to Himself, or whether he really was of 
the highest order of intrepid and dauntless spirits, 
or, being the latter, labored also under the former. 



88 PRECAL PROPHECY THE MESSIAH. 

his fixed resolution to undergo a certain amount of 
suffering, for a certain end, is rendered probable by 
examples of similar determination constantly meet- 
ing us in the cases of enthusiasts, bigots, patriots, 
fanatics, in both sacred and profane history. 

Che. We do not on the point of fact differ. Christ 
did determine so to suffer, and for a certain end. We 
pronounce nothing at present as to the cause of that 
determination. But Infidelity must satisfactorily 
explain how, with every wish and resolution to do 
so, Jesus Christ possibly could by any devices or per- 
suasions of his own fulfil these many and very specific 
prophecies of the sufferings of the Messiah. By 
what power could He effect the convergence of all 
in his own person? Your supposition infers that 
He, Himself, by some inscrutable means, induced 
Judas Iscariot to betray Him, Peter to deny Him, 
the Apostles to desert Him, the priesthood to arrest 
and consign Him to Pilate ; Pilate to scourge, crown, 
and condemn Him ; the multitudes to insist on his 
sentence being that of a slave, and a '' very outcast 
of men " — Crucifixion ; the two malefactors to be 
crucified with Him, the soldiers to cast lots on his 
vesture, the high priests and elders to mock and 
blaspheme Him on the cross, the people to curse and 
shake their heads at Him in his dying agonies ; the 
centurion, after death, to pierce his side with a spear ; 
the guard not to break one of his bones ; Pilate again 
to grant his body to Joseph, and Joseph to bury it 
in the grave of the rich. Each and all of these cir- 
cumstances, and many others I have not enumerated 
equally fulfilled, were to be realized according to 



PRECAL PROPHECY THE MESSIAH 89 

the Prophets in the Passion of the Messiah. Did 
Christ, being, as Infidelity holds, a mere man, per- 
suade or compel each of these many contrary parties, 
Romans, Jews, High Priests, Apostles — individuals 
and nations — no two of them sympathizing or hold- 
ing aught in common with the others, to take upon 
itself, in the very order the prophecies prescribed, to 
do unto Him the very act, and none other, which 
according to the same prophecies was in his Passion 
to be done to the Messiah ? If He could do all this, do 
you still persist in regarding Him as nothing more 
than man ? You assign Him, first, the entire mental 
command of all the Messianic prophecies ; and, 
secondly, a power by which He concentrates, through 
the most extraordinary coalition of conflicting and 
antipathetic parties, the fulfilment of them all upon 
his own person — that person being during the comple- 
tion of some of the most essential suspended in either 
helpless agony or absolutely dead upon the cross. 

Inf. I am reduced, certainly, to a dilemma. 

Chr. And granting, for a moment, the correctness 
of your supposition. He that knew so minutely and 
thoroughly each prophecy that bore upon the Passion, 
must as thoroughly have known each also that bore 
upon the triumph of the Messiah. Unless after ful- 
filling the former on the cross and in the grave, He 
could also out of the grave fulfil the latter, of what 
possible avail would the minutest realization of the 
former be ? The greatest of the many tests of the 
Messiahship were not to precede, but to follow, the 
death of the Messiah. If Christ were man only, He 
knew the Messianic prophecies were such as, however 



90 PRECAL PROPHECY — THE MESSIAH. 

astonishingly coincident with them his whole life had 
been, put it totally out of his power to carry on the 
deception of being the Messiah in death. The resur- 
rection from death, the ascension, the enthronement, 
the commission to judge the world, the sending forth 
of the Gospel, the consignation of the paternal power, 
the pouring forth of the Spirit, were declared by 
prophecy to be integral proofs of the Messiahship, 
but how could the least of these be given by ^ dead 
man in the grave ? 

Inf. The most insignificant of them could not be 
given by a mere man, living or dead. 

Chr. But further. Had Christ thus, according to 
the minutest predictions of Scripture, both suflfered 
and triumphed, yet even then there would be a mass 
of prophecy which his life before his betrayal must 
as completely have harmonized with, as with other 
prophecies did his passion, death, and resurrection 
after his betrayal. The Messiahship before birth, 
after birth, in life, in death, after death, is walled in 
by Eternal Prophecies which render its usurpation or 
assumption by any earthly power, intellect, or con- 
spiracy, a total impossibility. If Christ had not been 
born of a Yirgin, at Bethlehem, of the race of Abra- 
ham, of the tribe of Judah, of the family of David, 
in that very era during the standing of the second 
temple, — if He had not been a worker of signs, mar- 
vels, and miracles, in the midst of Israel, — if, in fact, a 
thousand prophecies appropriated to the Messiah had 
not already met and been verified in his person, pre- 
vious to his Crucifixion, — neither would the Jews have 
cared for any pretensions of his to the Messiahship, 



PRECAL PROPHECY THE MESSIAH. 91 

nor would the crucifixion and its results, though in 
every point consistent with the other prophecies, 
have gone an inch to establish his title to it ; that 
title would have been already invalidated by some 
notorious prophetic defect in the facts or events of 
his previous life. Unless Jesus Christ were the 
Messiah, the Messiah is not yet come ; in this propo- 
sition, Christians, Jews, and Infidels would, I think, 
agree. 

Inf. Yes, perforce : for who, for these thousand 
years and more past, has ever advanced the shadow 
of a claim to it? 

Chr. Suppose, th^n, you start a Messiah now. 

Inf. Explain yourself. 

Chr. Not only the Scriptures promise, but Jews, 
Christians, and Islamites, without exception, believe 
in the advent — past, present, or future— of the Mes- 
siah. If the advent be not past, it must be yet to 
come. Xow I will challenge you to bring forward 
in the nineteenth century any imaginable claimant 
to the Messiahship whose pretension to it the prophe- 
cies of Scripture will not at once baffle and explode, 
whose access to it they will not render unapproach- 
able, whose assumption of it, for even a brief period, 
will not, with every one who knows the Scriptures, 
be a sheer absurditv. 

LsTF. That may easily be, for the Messiah of the 
Scriptures was to be born at a certain point of time 
which is long past, in a certain condition of the Jew- 
ish nation which has long since disappeared, in a 
certain moral infancy of the heathen world beyond 
Judsea, which it has long since outgrown. These 



92 PRECAL PROPHECY THE MESSIAH. 

requisitions would alone make the assumption of 
modern Messiahship an impossibility. 

Chr. Ah! these would form only a few of the 
barriers, tests, and crucibles, which a pseudo-Messiah 
would have to confront in the prophetic Scriptures. 
If all mankind conspired together, we should not be 
able to get six of the Messianic prophecies of Scrip- 
ture, apparently the easiest and the lightest, to meet 
together and be fulfilled in any one individual in the 
whole world. It is not in the compass of human 
power and ingenuity to do it. On the other hand, 
Christianity, with its millions of intellects, holds all 
of them — Infidelity admits the majority of them — 
to have been fulfilled in Jesus Christ. In Him, from 
whom in heaven all these oracles of God proceeded, 
they are on earth and in heaven again united and 
consummated. 

Inf. I may admit the fulfilment of the prophecies 
of Messianic suffering by Jesus Christ, but the fulfil- 
ment of the triumphant prophecies by Him, or any 
one else, I entirely deny. That Christ rose from the 
dead, with all that follows in your creed, I do not 
believe. The circumstances of his death, though very 
deplorable, and presenting a most singular counter- 
part of the death predicted in the Jewish Scriptures 
of the Messiah, are still quite in accordance with the 
manners, mode of punishment, processes of execution, 
social, judicial, and political facts of the people, the 
empire, the period in which they occurred. But 
when you take me from earth to heaven, when you 
call upon me to believe that this man so crucified 
and buried, now sits and lives forever in the power 



PROPHECY AND HISTORY. 93 

of God at God's right hand, I have a right to de- 
mand the evidence on which so extraordinary a 
statement proceeds. The death, with most of its 
circumstances, tallies with history ; but the resurrec- 
tion and its consequences, as asserted by you, con- 
tradict all history. 

Chk. Let us first see what History itself at pres- 
ent is. Who is there now, as these prophecies pre- 
dict, higher, by their own confession, than " the kings 
of the earth ?" Who is it whom the whole civilized 
world "worships?" To whom is it that prayer is 
daily made and praise daily ascribed? Who has 
become the Light of those nations who were an- 
ciently Gentiles — Greece, Italy, Russia, Spain, Ger- 
many, France, ourselves, the Americas? Whose 
also are now becoming the " utmost parts of the 
earth" — Polynesia, Australia, New Zealand, the isles 
of the Pacific ? Before whose Spirit and whose reli- 
gion are the vast idolatries of India and China tot- 
tering to their fall ? Whose commandment, whose 
Gospel is it that is now " running very swiftly upon 
earth ?" You cannot deny that, be it the result of 
truth or superstition, of the power of God or the craft 
of man, the fact is unquestionable ; Jesus Christ the 
Crucified is the person so adored, praised, and prayed 
to. He is acknowledged as God, and his religion 
accepted as from God by a seed of nations tenfold, 
perhaps, more in number than the whole population 
of the world was at the date of his Crucifixion. Yet 
yon say History contradicts the Resurrection ! Here 
is the history of the world in epitome since the cru- 
cifixion ; and what is it but the mere fulfilment of 



94 PROPHECY AND HISTORY. 

those things which these prophecies had of old an- 
nounced as tlie inevitable consequences of this very 
Resurrection of the Messiah? What was then Pro- 
phecy is now History : that is the sole difference. 

Inf. The Resurrection itself is an exception to all 
our human experience : men once dead do not rise 
again from the dead. 

Chr. You touch not the point at issue. He whom 
the nations of Christendom now worship as their 
God and Saviour is the very same Person w- ho, being, 
in minute accordance with the prophecies, crucified, 
was, according to the same prophecies, to rise again, 
and his resurrection to be followed by the very 
events which since then have constituted, on the 
largest scale, the history of the world, and now sur- 
round us on every side. Those events you admit : 
the prophecies which in express terms predict such 
events are there in your hands : predicting them as 
infallibly to follow the resurrection of the crucified 
Messiah. They have followed ; the Crucified is glo- 
ried in by Christendom as its King, its Saviour, its 
Everlasting Life ! Yet you say, " of his Resurrec- 
tion you require evidence !" All history since the 
crucifixion is the evidence of the resurrection also 
of Christ. If not, let us hear how you account for 
this one fact among hundreds. How is it that 
Jesus Christ is thus the object of the worship and 
prayers of Christendom eighteen centuries after his 
Crucifixion ? 

Inf. Has not Gibbon explained it ? 

Chr. No ; nor touched on its explanation. Had 
the reasons he assigns for the progress of Chris- 



PROPHECY AND HISTORY. 95 

tianity during the first three centuries been at all to 
the purpose in accounting for the existence itself of 
Christianity, or even of the first Christian, which 
they utterly fail to do, there are fifteen centuries 
since then of a still increasing worship of Jesus 
Christ to be accounted for. Here are the prophecies 
that He, the Crucified, should be the w^orship of 
many nations, and finally of the w^orld. Here is 
Christendom the verification of those prophecies. 
My question is, By what Power have they been veri- 
fied ? by what Power has Scriptural prophecy become 
modern history ? Is it by that of a dead man in the 
grave ? 

Inf. The fact that the same Person who was once 
crucified, is now universally adored as God, is not by 
any one to be denied. Jesus Christ, I admit, is 
prayed to as being one God with the Father, co- 
eternal and co-omnipotent, by the numerous millions 
of orthodox Christendom through the four quarters 
of the globe. That fact requires an explanation on 
behalf of Infidelity which, before our discussion ter- 
minates, I will attempt to supply ; but what staggers 
me now is, that these prophecies should, so many 
thousand years ago, predict that such would be the 
fact. I do not see my way here. 

Chr. Cast aside the Scriptures entirely ; proceed 
on only what you see with your own senses — Christ 
Jesus everywhere worshipped as God ; trace Him 
back to his tomb, as dead as the stone itself; let 
Him remain so ; let Him never rise ; let Him be 
mere man ; let his body, like any other man's, see 
corruption ; let not the faithfulness of God be in any 



96 PROPHECY AND HISTORY. 

sense shown in its destruction, or the loving-kind- 
ness of God in his grave ; let Him be what the in- 
fidel would fain have Him to be, and let the resur- 
rection be a delusion. How does all this hypothesis 
help you in any degree to solve the hard fact of the 
universal worship of this Christ? Does it not involve 
you in far more perplexing difficulties than any 
which our faith proposes to your acceptance. For 
see, the fact by itself baffles you ; the prophecies by 
themselves baffle you : neither the fact nor the pro- 
phecies can be ignored ; the one is before all men's 
eyes, the others are in all men's hands. The con- 
nection between them, again, by whatever Power 
established, cannot be controverted, yet cannot be 
admitted, without conceding that the same power 
which has established the fact inspired also the pro- 
phecies. I must beg the intellect of Infidelity to 
extricate itself from the position in which " the more 
and more mouldering prop of prophecy," as Newman 
calls it, here fixes it. 

Ikf. ]N"one of them may, after all, as ]!^ewman 
suggests, in reality apply to Jesus Christ. 

Chr. We had, I thought, very efi*ectually settled that 
question in the Crucifixion and its incidents — in his 
whole life and character preceding the Crucifixion. But 
what if they do not ? Dissolve the connection ; Jesus 
Christ Himself, his character, his vast spiritual king- 
dom, the power his very name exercises over count- 
less souls is a greater difficulty to you without, than 
He is with, prophecy. Infidelity desires to supersede 
the Church as '' the Teacher of the nations." I come 
to Infidelity ; I request it, without alluding to the 



PKOPHECY AND HISTOKY. 97 

Scriptures or prophecy, to teach me " who and what 
He whom the nations worship is." It can teach me 
nothing ; it is itself inexpressibly at a loss to suggest 
who He is. If it says "God," it becomes Christian; 
if it says "man only," his kingdom, power, and 
glory, even on this earth, are in an instant seen, and 
almost admitted to be, irreconcilable with mere man- 
hood. If it denies such power, the world itself, 
from east to west, lifts np its voice to proclaim it ; 
and if it did not, multitudes profess themselves ready 
to sacrifice the world to prove it. Thus Infidelity, 
being darkness itself as to the great spiritual power 
which exercises supremacy in the sonls of men, has 
nothing of its own to communicate in explanation of 
the fact of that power. If I proceed to say, " Here 
are very ancient Scriptures in which I find all these 
modern facts laid down as to happen in certain times 
and order ; how come these ancient Scriptures to 
know any thing^ much less the very facts themselves 
of modern times?" — Infidelity, again, except at the 
expense of ceasing to be Infidelity, has no rational 
explanation at its command. I proceed, lastly, to 
compare the facts Infidelity cannot deny with the 
Scriptures it cannot ignore. There exists, I find, 
perfect harmony between them ; and this harmony 
constitutes only part of the strength of that kingdom 
it dreams of subverting and succeeding. All re- 
search and investigation lead me thus from Infidel- 
ity, as utterly unable to teach one positive truth, to 
Christianity, which, teaching me a vast system of 
positive truths, places also the Scriptures in my 
hands, saying, " these things are not of to-day nor 

5 



98 PROPHECY AND HISTORT. 

yesterday, they were written of old in the Scriptures, 
and they are fullilled according to the Scriptures be- 
cause the Scriptures are of God." Here is reason, 
here is consistency, here is an explanation in accord- 
ance with all my conceptions of the power and wis- 
dom of God, of the kingdom and the Scriptures of 
Christ. I find in it that which accounts for all which 
my intellect is capable of comprehending in the mat- 
ter : my intellect therefore compels me to be a Chris- 
tian : it cannot, and it will not, when such facts as 
these tower up before it between heaven and earth, 
remain content with the Infidelity which has only 
two phrases in its vocabulary, "I don't know," or, 
''I don't believe." You observe that I give you 
full permission to dismiss all discussion about the 
faith, if you can without it satisfactorily solve the 
present facts of Christianity. But this permission 
only complicates your embarrassments. Christ with 
the Scriptures is hard to be solved, %ut Christ with- 
out the Scriptures is not to be solved at all by Infi- 
delity. He is the same great Fact, but a deeper and 
more awful mystery than ever. 

Inf. I demur to accepting the Resurrection itself 
as a fact. 

Chr. And the non-acceptance of it redoubles the 
difiiculty you experience in explaining the events 
subsequent to the Resurrection. But let us, accord- 
ing to our rule, examine it both as a fact and a pro- 
phecy, a prophecy of the Spirit of Christ in the 
Scriptures, and an act of Christ Himself in person. 
'' Sir," said the Sanhedrim to Pilate, " we remember 
that deceiver said, while he was yet alive. After three 



THE KESURRECTION AND HISTORY. 99 

days I will rise again." ^ This prophecy was a public 
challenge by Jesus Christ to the world, to death, to 
Satan, to hell, sufficient of itself to clench the whole 
question of his Messiahship and Godhead. No test 
more wholly to the point could be wished for by the 
Jewish or Infidel world. It was a defiance delivered 
by one person to the whole created universe to keep 
Him when crucified, dead, and buried, more than 
three days in the grave. Has any similar challenge 
been given from the beginning of the world to this 
day ? Why did Christ alone give it — give it before 
that very passover in which He knew and announced 
that He should be crucified — give it to Jews, Romans, 
the princes, and the people alike — so give it that there 
was neither Jew nor Roman in Jerusalem who could 
not on the third day walk to the sepulchre and con- 
vince himself whether the dead body of the great 
Prophet of Israel was there or not ? Well might St. 
Paul, I think, declare that Christ triumphed " openly :" 
for could there be a more open " show " of challenge, 
battle, victory, total and overwhelming conquest in 
the act of death itself over death and corruption? 
And you, as a scholar, know the extreme jealousy 
with which the Roman government regarded the 
slightest approximation to such a Messianic provoca- 
tion as this ; it would mark and at once kill the man 
who made it ; it did-so, not only individually, but it up- 
rooted the nation itself for subsequently crediting such 
an assertion as a ground for action. Thus in the case 
of our Saviour ; the Roman guard was stationed ; the 

iMatt. xxvii. 13. 



100 THE RESURRECTION AND HISTORY. 

stone sealed with the goyernment seal; the sepulchre 
itself was new ; no corpse but that of Christ had 
ever been deposited therein ; by day the eastern sun, 
by night the full moon of the paschal festival shed a 
flood of light on the tomb, on the garden, on the 
mount, on the Roman watch; the Jewish people, 
with its priesthood and Sanhedrim, formed a more 
extended conclave of eyes jealously fixed on every 
motion of a leaf on that high and all-exposed ascent. 
They had to keep that dead body for three days only 
in that sealed and guarded tomb. They had only to 
show it the fourth day to Jerusalem, and, lo ! the 
Crucified, who made Himself equal with God, was an 
impostor; their own great king was yet to come; 
their consciences were not only absolved from blood- 
guiltiness, but the blasphemer had justly and right- 
eously perished. Only for three days ! on the third 
day He must rise. If He rose the first day, the second 
day, or any other day than the very day announced 
by the Scriptures and Himself, He would be a mystery 
indeed, but not the Messiah, not the Christ of God. 
Their pride, nationality, bigotry, conscience, were all 
fearfully and vigilantly armed to keep in self-defence 
that dead body still dead for three days in the very 
centre of assembled Israel, and in the sight of con- 
gregated Jerusalem. The third day came, and with 
it Christ and the Resurrection ; the prophecy had 
been as a fire of expectation kindled by Christ Him- 
self in every heart ; the fulfilment of it was indeed 
the earthquake that shook and still shakes the 
world : it was the commencement of the dissolution 
of Judah, and of the great gathering of the Gentiles. 



THE RESURRECTION AKD HISTORY. 101 

IisTF. Newman does not grapple, as I could wish, 
with the Resurrection. 

Chr. Will you grapple with it ? 

Inf. It is so astounding a statement that a man 
scarcely knows how to begin to grapple with it. 

Chr. The Jews were more practical; they did 
grapple with both the prophecy and the fact. They 
had a dead body in their absolute power; a body 
ten times dead ; lacerated, flayed, nailed through, 
spirit-killed, heart-pierced ; never had death so com- 
plete a victim in his prison-house ; over it was the 
sepulchre of the rock ; over the sepulchre, the seal ; 
over the seal, the Roman discipline ; and over the 
Roman discipline, the priestly jealousy of the San- 
hedrim. This was grappling practically with the 
question of the Resurrection. Theirs was no theory, 
no closet hypothesis as to possibility or impossibility. 
Christ had fixed a day beyond which no power in 
heaven or earth could detain Him in the grave. If 
they could keep Him beyond that time, they were 
safe ; if not, all things told them " the vineyard 
would for ever pass away from them." They had 
graver and more vital reasons for preventing, than 
any modern Infidel has for doubting, the Resurrec- 
tion. What more than they did, could all London 
do, to prevent the resurrection of a dead body buried 
in St. James's or the Green Park ? 

Inf. K I stationed a regiment to guard a dead 
body in a stone sepulchre from rising again, all 
London would certainly deem me insane ; but if I 
stationed it to guard against its exhumation and re- 
moval for sinister purposes by the fanatic followers 



102 THE RESURRECTION AND HISTORY. 

of the deceased, they would acknowledge the pre- 
caution necessary and judicious. 

Chr. And certain to be effective. On the third 
day the tomb is found open, the ponderous stone not 
to be moved lightly nor by few hands is seen rolled 
off, the seal is broken, and the body has disappeared. 
What would London say to that ? 

Inf. The precautions were insufficient and inef- 
fective. 

Chr. " The disciples came by night and stole him 
away, while the soldiers slept ?" 

Inf. Just so. 

Chr. Yet precautions more efficient could not 
have been suggested or executed : if any such could, 
specify them. 

Inf. If the dead was by some inexplicable fatal- 
ity, some solitary exception to all the laws of nature, 
doomed to rise the third day to life again, a Roman 
army of twelve legions could not have prevented it. 
Tens of thousands would in such eventuality have 
been as inefficient as a single cohort. If the object 
was only to guard against any clandestine attempt 
on the part of the Apostles, and a few women, no 
formidable force was required to resist or give the 
alarm against such assailants ; the attempt, in fact, 
itself would have been the confession and detec- 
tion of the whole imposture. I do not, therefore, 
see what stronger or more judicious precautions 
could, under the circumstances of the case, have 
been taken. 

Chr. Nevertheless, the disciples, you think, did 
succeed in coming and stealing Him ? 



THE RESURRECTION AND HISTORY. 103 

Inf. It must have been so, how else could the 
body have disappeared ? 

Chr. One of the infinite dilemmas of Infidelity. 
How was it possible for the disciples, unobserved, at 
such a time, such a place, in such an excited state 
of the whole population of Jerusalem, through people, 
priests, and soldiers, every zealot for the law, every 
witness of the Crucifixion on the qui vive for the 
" third day," to get at the tomb — roll off the stone — 
and through guards and ten thousand vigilant eyes, 
carry off the dead body ? On the other hand, if they 
did not " steal" Him, how possibly could the body 
have disappeared? It was worth their law, their 
temple, their priesthood, their whole vineyard and 
inheritance to the ruling body of Jerusalem. Why, 
if stolen, was it not — being more precious to them 
than its weight in gold — attempted to be recovered ? 
Why were not the whole number of the Apostles 
immediately summoned before the Sanhedrim, and 
examined on the subject? Could they regain pos- 
session of it, though thus unaccountably escaped 
their hands, it would convince every religious Jew 
of the utter falsehood of the pretensions of the cruci- 
fied Nazarene. They neither could do that, nor dare 
they attempt to substitute another corpse for it to 
the people ; the face, the person, every lineament of 
the " man of sorrows" were too familiar to the nation, 
and that nation was now assembled in Jerusalem. 
Moreover had they selected one crucified, with pierced 
hands and feet, where would have been the lacera- 
tions of the scourge, the impalement of the crown of 
thorns, the heart spear-lanced, and the unbroken 



104 THE RESURRECTION AND HISTORY. 

bones : the very " signs" of prophecy and Messiah- 
ship, their own ruthless infatuation had caused to be 
added to a thousand preceding ones? What the 
Jews, with the most potent inducements of interest 
and religion, of their whole policy being at stake, 
did yet not do, would of itself be to me a guarantee 
of the fact of the Resurrection. Whoever heard that 
a whole nation should first lose a dead body publicly 
crucified, publicly interred, publicly guarded, and 
having lost it, should then find it impossible to dis- 
cover a single trace of what had become of it, as a 
dead body ? The thing has no parallel. The Jews 
did nothing, because they could do nothing, to dis- 
prove the Resurrection. I^o movement could they 
have made which would not have rendered the fact 
more notorious, dangerous, and destructive, to its 
gainsayers. But let us suppose the Apostles did 
steal the body, they must have done something with 
it, what did they do ? 

Inf. What could they do ? they could not keep a 
body which had already been three days in the tomb. 

Ohr. Scarcely. 

Inf. They buried it then. 

Chr. Where, how, and when ? 

Inf. Anywhere — any way they could — as secretly 
as they could. 

Ohr. To what end, and for what purpose ? They 
stole it, you suppose, at the risk of their lives in the 
full light of the paschal moon, from such an emi- 
nence as Calvary, from the vigilance of the strictest 
military discipline the world has ever known, out 
of the honorable tomb of the rich man, Joseph of 



THE RESURRECTION AND HISTORY. 105 

Arimatliea, himself, like themselves, a disciple, to 
bury it in some other place, anywhere, in any man- 
ner, as clandestinely and as dishonorably as they 
could. Do you believe this of the Blessed Virgin, of 
St. Peter, St. John, Mary Magdalene, and the rest 
of the disciples ? Are you not asking me to believe 
a statement at least quite as wonderful as the Resur- 
rection, yet, unlike the Kesurrection, advancing not 
a single reason to challenge my assent to its moral 
and physical improbabilities. 

Inf. I am no believer in the Resurrection of Jesus 
Christ, but it would be disingenuous not to confess 
that all the efforts I have read to disprove the fact 
itself appear to me to be failures. The Sanhedrim 
and the Priesthood made the best they could of the 
fact that, in spite of the precautionary measures of 
the Roman Government and their own, the body of 
the Crucilied had disappeared. 

Chr. '' Why do the heathen so furiously rage to- 
gether, and why do the people imagine a vain thing ? 
The kings of the earth stand up, and the rulers take 
counsel together against the Lord and against his 
Anointed. Let us break their bands asunder, and 
cast away their cords from us. He that dw^elleth in 
heaven shall laugh them to scorn ; the Lord shall 
have them in derision."^ Is there aught in this 
prophecy, think you, descriptive of the circumstances 
preceding and accompanying the Resurrection ? Was 
there no '' derision in heaven " when the " counsel " 
was taken, the stone sealed, the guard appointed and 
set ? No " scorn " at this league of earth and hell, of 

1 Ps. ii. 

5^^ 



106 THE KESURRECTION AND HISTORY. 

man and Satan, to keep the "Lord of Life" in the 
power of death ? 

Inf. Beyond the fact of disappearance, I cannot 
persuade myself to go. Yet, how it could disappear, 
why it should disappear ; why the Apostles, if they 
could, should wish to possess themselves of a dead 
body, which, by remaining dead, convicted them of 
credulity, and their Master of the darkest imposi- 
tion; how, above all, they should become so sud- 
denly changed, in diametrically the opposite way to 
w^hich the detection and consciousness of such im- 
position would have changed them ; how they came 
to adhere, to the end of their lives, to the statement, 
that for days they had, with their own senses, seen, 
felt, handled, eaten with, and conversed with "Jesus 
Christ raised to life from the dead," identified to them 
as such by moral, mental, physical proofs, are con- 
siderations which present as serious difficulties as the 
Resurrection itself. I scarcely know here what to 
believe, what not to believe. 

Chr. Meanwhile, on the other side, the Scriptures 
present you with prophecy on prophecy, predictive 
of the Resurrection and its results from that time 
to this, and to the end of the world. Annul proph- 
ecy, the fact of the Resurrection remains, as you 
confess, never disproved ; annul both prophecy and 
the Resurrection, the religious, and, with it indis- 
solubly wedded, the secular history of the last 
eighteen centuries, still confronts the perplexed "In- 
tellect " of Infidelity. Thus, the further your " In- 
tellect " severs itself from Christianity, the deeper it 
plunges into confusion worse confounded. 



PARABOLICAL PROPHECY. 107 

But let us dispatch this subject of prophecy, for 
we have others of no less importance to discuss. ^_ 

Inf. I will proceed then to another objection in 
connection with it. ''The prophecies of the New 
Testament," states Newman,^ " are not many." Now, 
one would imagine that the Messiah would have de- 
livered many prophecies in his own person. 

Chr. And ^0 He did. Newman's objection in 
this, as in previous instances, has no foundation. 
Nearly half the number of parables, for instance, 
delivered by our Blessed Lord, are prophecies — para- 
bolic prophecies. 

In^f. How is that to be proved ? 

Chr. Let us take one for illustration ; this — about 
the briefest — of the Drag-net.^ " The kingdom of 
heaven is like unto a net that w^as cast into the sea, 
and gathered of every kind." 

Inf. But this is a mere parable. 

Chr. a parabolic prophecy. 

Inf. I do not perceive it. 

Chr. Because, instead of putting yourself back at 
the time-point of its delivery, looking forward to 
the strange things it predicts, you put yourself in 
A. D. 1854, in the midst of these things themselves 
long fulfilled, and therefore familiarized to your 
mind. Take any part of the Christian Church — the 
Anglican Church, for example — was it in England at 
the time our Lord spoke this parable ? 

Inf. No. 

Chr. Did Britain offer itself to the Christian re- 
ligion ? 

1 Phases of Faith, page 115. ^Msitt. xiii. 47. 



108 parabolical prophecy. 

Inf. No. 

Che. Nor manufacture it at home. 

Inf. 'No. 

Chr. Something was "cast over" Britain? 

Inf. Admitted. 

Chr. By the agency of men ? 

Inf. Clearly. 

Chr. And Britain became "gathered" into the 
Church? 

Inf. Just so. 

Chr. Have all the Christians in Britain, since its 
conversion to the faith, been "good?" Has the 
Church included none whom we must not honestly 
confess to have shamed not only Christianity, but 
Humanity itself? 

Inf. Truly it has. Your great reformer of religion, 
Henry YIII., about the worst among them. 

Chr. Is every member, or every listener in our 
churches at present really a "saint" — really "good?" 

Inf. With a safe conscience as to not being guilty 
of uncharitableness, I answer, No. 

Chr. Part are " bad," then — with a little of the 
faith, hope, and charity of a Christian in them. 
Yet they are in the Church— truly members of the 
Church ; they remain in the Church ; they come 
voluntarily to the service, preaching, and ordinances 
of the Church. If any attempt were made to cut 
them off from the Church, their anger and resent- 
ment would evince itself by the adoption of very 
cogent measures against the aggressor. The Church 
thus literally gathers of every kind of character — 
yet it is the Kingdom of Heaven. 



PARABOLICAL PEOPHECY. 109 



Inf. I understand. 

Chr. Is it not so also in France, Spain, Italy, in 
every country professing the faith of this ''kingdom?" 

Ikf. ISo doubt. 

Chr. And always has been. Characters the least 
in unison with the characteristics of this kingdom 
are not only gathered into it, but, as a general rule, 
are the most jealous of any interference with their 
right — material or spiritual — of title and possession 
therein. How, think you, would a mailed Crusader, 
dripping with Saracen gore, have replied to your 
allegation " that he was no Christian ?" 

Inf. Probably he would, in all sincerity, have 
cleaved my skull with his battle-axe. 

Chr. And Henry YIII., had you denounced him 
as a frightful wen on the Church of Christ ? 

Inf. He would have chained me between a Papist 
and a Protestant, and burned the three of us to- 
gether in Smithfield. 

Chr. And Charles IX. of France, had you requested 
him to judge himself by the Nine Benedictions of 
Christianity ? 

Inf. I should have added another victim to the 
night of St. Bartholomew. 

Chr. And Cromwell, streaming with his country's 
blood, professing he slew thousands of his fellow- 
subjects in England, and his tens of thousands in 
Ireland, in the name of the Lord — could you have 
brought him side by side with our Lord and ^is 
warfare ? What think you he would have done to 
you for drawing the attention of the nation to the 
contrast ? 



110 PARABOrJCAL PROPHECY. 

Inf. Hanged me for a malignant. 

Chr. Are these, and such like, the characters 
v^'hom^d priori^ we should imagine a kingdom openly 
heralding itself as the "' kingdom of heaven," would 
or could gather m among its subjects and citizens? 

Inf. 'Not exactly. 

Chr. Yet further. How came such characters to 
permit themselves for a moment to be "gathered in," 
and being so, to make it their chief pride to be, not 
only fish in the Gospel net, but the very champions 
of the net itself in the sea ? Devise a kingdom of 
heaven for mankind. Before a single disciple under- 
stands its principles and constitution, place yourself 
on a rock from which a sweeping net, searching 
every hollow and recess within its circle at the bot- 
tom of the sea, is cast by fishermen. Proclaim/' My 
kingdom, like this net, wdll gather the bad as well as 
the good throughout the world, and yet it will be the 
kingdom of God." Would you say this, or rather 
would not such a comparison be the last which hu- 
man prudence and probability would dictate to your 
judgment? For, you would argue, either such a 
kingdom can never be the kingdom of heaven, or, 
being such, it must of necessity exclude the '' bad." 
The bad themselves will never desire to be gath- 
ered into its fold. ^Nevertheless, just as our Sa- 
viour prophesied, so it has come to pass. His 
Church gathers, as you see, of every kind ; it sweeps 
the alley and the gallows, as well as the palace and 
the bench. All descriptions of character profess 
that they are " gathered" into it. Is not that the 
fact? 



PARABOLICAL PROPHECY. Ill 

Inf. Certainly. 

Chr. Was it a fact when the parable was deliv- 
ered? 

Inf. How could it be? for the net was not cast 
from the rock. 

Chr. The parable, then, is a prophecy.' The 
Church in this parish, this kingdom, in the world, 
is that prophecy fulfilled. Was not Christ, then, in 
this, and many similar parables, the Prophet of the 
future ? The prophecy was directly opposed to all 
the ideas of his own nation and age, as well as to 
the apparent tendency of human nature and the 
heavenly designation of his own religion. 

Inf. He was a Prophet, at any rate, of Intuition. 

Chr. Further, men like Henry VIII., Charles IX., 
Philip II., Calvin, Cromwell, John Knox- — zealous, 
or gloomy, or fanatic, or morose, or tyrannous char- 
acters, — have tried to make the Church somewhat 
else than what Christ prophesied it was to be. With 
what effect? — the destruction, so far as they could 
effect it, of its heavenly-mindedness — of its being 
the kingdom of heaven. How came Christ alone to 
lay it down that to gather, and not reject ''the bad" 
in this world, is that quality whereby his religion is 
the kingdom of heaven ? Was that also by " In- 
tuition ?" Can you suggest any other Intuitionist who 
has said, " My kingdom is the kingdom of heaven ; 
gather, therefore, into it the bad ?" 

Inf. It must have astounded Jews and heathen 
alike ; for such an expression appears to involve 
positive contradiction. 

Chr. So the Reformers of Christ — if I may with- 



112 PARABOLICAL PROPHECY. 

out profanity say so — have always thought. They 
have always taken upon them to alter the form 
which Christ Himself has selected for the vessel of 
his salvation — a gatherer-in of the good and bad 
indifferently. They, on the contrary, must make it 
a caster-off of the bad — they must purge and purify 
it of all such as, according to their own ideas, are 
the bad. But men will not be so "purged" and 
" purified." The world has, in this sense, always had 
a truer view of the Church than either those who 
would confine it to " the godly," after their own defi- 
nition of " the godly," or those who secede from it 
because it is composed of ''good and bad." The 
attempt to form a Church into which none but 
" saints," the pious, or the godly, shall be admitted, 
violates the very character and duties which Himself 
has assigned to his Church — to gather in the lost; 
to have mercy, and not sacrifice ; to do good to 
all; and to leave the judgment as to who are really 
good and really bad to Himself. But read the next 
verse. 

Inf. " Which, when it was full, they drew to shore, 
and sat down and gathered the good into vessels, 
and cast the bad away. So shall it be at the end of 
the world. The angels shall come forth, and sever 
the wicked from among the just." 

Chr. The first part of the prophecy— the gather- 
ing in of all kinds — we ourselves see in the fulness 
of action ; do you think the second part, the severing, 
not by men but by angels, not now but at the end 
of the world, will be equally verified ? 

LsTF. A pregnant question. 



PARABOLICAL PROPHECY. 113 

Chr. Is not the "separation" more in accordance, 
according to human reasoning, with the kingdom of 
heaven, than the "gathering?" The gathering is 
admitted — what say yon to the " severing ?" 

Inf. It is possible. 

Chr. K you reject it, you will. Reason being arbi- 
tress, have admitted the less, and rejected the greater 
probability. Men, under Christ, gather now the 
" good and bad" into the Church. Angels, under 
Christ, at the end of the world, will sever the good 
from the bad. Is this hard for Reason to believe ? 

Inf. In this way many of the parables may be 
certainly ranked among the more prominent proph- 
ecies. 

Chr. Compare them with the progress and state of 
Christ's Church, and you will find them prophecies of 
the exactest kind, opening to view centuries of future 
events. Some, as this of the net, carried on beyond 
the end of the world, even to the judgment day. Is 
not that Prophecy, in the simplest words indeed, but 
on the most stupendous scale? We do not know 
how to read Christ, unless we have learnt that the 
weight of eternity lies upon every one of his words. 
As certainly as we now see the "gathering," we 
shall hereafter see the " severing." 

We have now gone through instances of oral, vis- 
ual, precal, and parabolical prophecies. Scores of 
others, equally clear and pointed, might be enumer- 
ated. But before we conclude this portion of our dis- 
cussion, may I ask what your notion of Prophecy is ? 

Inf. Simply a prediction. 



114 PROPHECY AND PKEDICTIOlSr. 

Chr. Without supernatural communication ? 

Inf. Why — no. 

Chr. Simple prediction does not define Prophecy. 
Can you name one prophet disconnected with the 
Church of Christ, in either its ancient or present 
aspect ? 

Inf. Do you mean one that, by supernatural influ- 
ence, made known beforehand the events of futurity ? 

Chr. Yes. 

Inf. Seneca; he prophesied of the discovery of 
America. 

Chr. By inspiration ? 

Inf. If I grant that, I concede the whole princi- 
ple of inspiration in all its phases. 

Chr. That is for your consideration. 

Inf. He predicted, but not by inspiration. 

Chr. He was no prophet then ? 

Inf. But prediction is as wonderful as prophecy. 

Chr. Ah ! you too, the Infidel, like the Jew, would 
make the " miraculum" the test ; must you too, like 
Lord Herbert of Cherbury, have your '^ sign ?" 

Inf. But if a simple human prediction be as mi- 
raculous as an inspired prophecy, whence can Isaiah 
claim advantage over Seneca ? 

Chr. No analogy exists between them. Did the 
Atlantic Ocean, the West Indies, and America, exist 
in Seneca's time ? 

Inf. They did ; what then ? 

Chr. It is not the future existence then of some- 
thing which in his own time had no existence which 
he predicts, but simply that certain lands which then 
existed would at a future time be discovered. It is 



NATURE OF PROPHECY. 115 

not a creation, but a discovery, that he foretells, a 
discovery of facts suspected long before to have ex- 
istence. For thus writes Strabo : — '' In the hemi- 
sphere between the shores of the west of Europe, and 
of the east of Asia, many other inhabited continents of 
land may exist." ^ Contrast with this any one of the 
many prophecies of Isaiah relative to our Lord : this 
for instance : — " Behold my servant, whom I uphold ; 
my elect, in whom my soul delighteth ; I will put my 
spirit upon him ; he shall bring forth Judgment to 
the Gentiles. I the Lord have called him in right- 
eousness, and I will hold thine hand, and will keep 
thee, and give thee for a covenant to the people, for 
a light to the Gentiles. Behold, the former things are 
come to pass, and new things do I declare : before 
they spring forth I tell you of them." When this 
prophecy was delivered Jesus Christ was not born ; 
the Jews were the only people professing to be in 
covenant with God ; the heathen had no conception 
of even the meaning of the words " covenant with 
God." The Jews had no conception of a Saviour 
who was to be a " light to the Gentiles." Neither 
Jews nor Gentiles had any conception of such a 
character as '' the Delight of the soul of God, who 
would not break a bruised reed nor quench the 
smoking flax : who would bring the blind to salva- 
tion by a way they knew not ; who would lead them 
in paths they had not known ; w^ho would make 
darkness light, and crooked things straight before 
them." Jesus Christ was born 712 years after this 
prophecy was spoken, 2566 years have therefore 

^ Strabo. Ub. i. p. 65. 



116 NATURE OF PROPHECY. 

elapsed since its delivery, but what was then incredi- 
ble and unintelligible Prophecy has since, through 
a succession of political and spiritual revolutions, 
become the normal state of the civilized world. The 
then heathen nations " orbis terrarum," have ceased 
to be heathen ; they have ceased to be so in one 
especial way : the faith they have embraced is one 
strictly of covenant with God in Jesus Christ. The 
question here is not as to the abstract truth or false- 
hood of Christianity, but here are Christ and Chris- 
tianity, false or true, prophesied by Isaiah as to be 
accepted by the heathen hereafter as their light, 
their covenant, and their salvation. He speaks of 
things having then no existence in even the imagi- 
nations of Jews or heathens as certain to be called into 
future existence by the power of the Almighty. He 
announces, " homine judice," present non-existences, 
present incredibilities, present impossibilities, as, 
" Deo vindice," certain to form the future state of 
the religious and intellectual world. Can we rank 
Strabo's assertion, or Seneca's prediction, in the same 
category with such a prophecy as this? Try to 
allege some other non-Scriptural prophet. Why 
not bring forward Mohammed, who is, if I may judge 
from this work of Foxton's on your table, a great 
favorite at present with the '^ representative-men" 
school. 

LsTF. But he never delivered a prophecy in the sense 
we are now discussing, nor indeed in any other sense 
of which I am aware. 

Chr. Nevertheless all Mohammedans declare their 
faith to be " that there is one God, and Mohammed is 



MOHAMIVIED TEST OF MISSION. 117 

the prophet of God." Geologists, Pantheists, Deists, 
Atheists, appear as much inclined to believe in him 
as in Jesus Christ, only they are sadly perplexed for 
a single moral or intellectual reason for such faith, 
and they dare not profess admiration for him in his 
real character as the founder of a system of animal 
licentiousness and brutal force for the religion of 
man. Now nearly 4600 years elapsed between the 
creation of the world and the birth of Mohammed ; 
during that time the Mohammedans do not pretend 
there exists a single prophecy as to his birth, life, 
character, or death. He himself most prudently dis- 
claimed all pretensions to miracles or prophecy, for, 
unlike his modern panegyrists, he knew better than 
to imagine it easy to impose a miracle upon masses 
of men in the perfect possession of their senses. 

Inf. Perhaps so. By "prophet" the Islamites 
evidently mean not an inspired predictor of futurity, 
but one who has received his commission from God. 
A man may receive such a commission without 
having included in it the powers of prophecy and 
miracles. 

Chr. As the clergy of the Church, for instance, 
receive theirs. 

Inf. They do not pretend to it in the sense in 
which Mohammed claimed it. 

Chr. Certainly not. All they assume is to be 
ministers of Him who had received such a Divine 
commission for our salvation, and proved the reality 
of it by signs, wonders, marvels, and prophecies 
utterly above all power, short of God's, to perform 
or enunciate. But supposing the claim to divine 



118 MOHAMMED TEST OF MISSION. 

authority in tlie original source of mission, Christ's 
or Mohammed's, to be admitted in the entire absence 
of such credentials from the Supreme Being, I 
see not what prevents you or me, or any man, 
woman, or child, in the streets, from asserting a 
divine commission for himself to religionize the 
world according to his own ideas, and for any pur- 
pose he pleases. 

Inf. But Jesus Christ Himself did not lay such 
great stress Himself on his miracles. 

Chr. You err, I think : He laid so great stress that 
He explicitly declares the Jews w^ould not have 
sinned in rejecting Him, except for these miracles. 
" If I do not the works of my Father, believe me not. 
I have a greater witness than that of John ; the 
same works that I do bear witness of me that the 
Father hath sent me. If I had not done among 
them the works that never man did, they would not 
have sin ; now they have no cloak for their sin." 
When a Mormonite therefore comes to a clergyman, 
as they bave come to me, preferring the claim of 
Joseph Smith to be a new Saviour, the clergyman 
may justly say, " I am the minister of Jesus Christ, 
who proved Himself to be the Son of God by doing 
among men the works that God alone can do : He 
has ever since continued to exercise the same power 
by perpetuating and extending his salvation to the 
ends of the earth. What greater works, to supersede 
Him whose mission I bear, and whose servant I am, 
has Joseph Smith shown before the world ?" Would 
not such be a fair challenge ? 

Inf. I think it would. 



MOHAMMED — TEST OF MISSION. 119 

Che. And if fair to Joseph Smith, surely fair to 
Mohammed, surely fair to every one claiming to su- 
persede the authority of Jesus Christ over the souls 
of men. 

Inf. But did not Christ Himself supersede Moses ? 

Chr. Does He anywhere say so — does He not 
everywhere declare the very reverse, that he came 
to fulfil, not supersede, Moses and the prophets ? Is 
not one of his titles, the Alpha, He that was from 
the beginning. Moses was his witness, every prophet 
his herald, yet for all this He states the Jews would 
have been justified in rejecting Him unless He had 
in the midst of them done the works of that omnipo- 
tence which had commissioned Him. Now why did 
Mohammed shrink from that test? 

Inf. Because miracles do not, as Newman ex- 
presses it, produce " moral conviction." 

Chr. And you really suppose Mohammed to have 
thought as Newman does on this subject, that he 
abstained from working miracles because they would 
not on certain characters produce conversion of life, 
which is, I infer, what Newman means by " moral 
conviction." 

Inf. That would be supposing too much. He per- 
formed none simply because he could perform none. 

Chr. Clearly so ; yet one single miracle would, in 
such a cause as his, have been invaluable for his 
purposes. For the same reason he never risked a 
prophecy with reference to himself; a few months or 
a few years, perhaps a few days, would have exposed 
him for what he truly was, — a false and most perni- 
cious impostor. But multitudes of Scriptural prophe- 



120 MISSION AND MIRACLES. 

cies bearing directly on Christ are not only in Him, 
and Him alone, fulfilled, — but, as in the instance we 
have have examined, He put it, by prophecies of his 
own as to the time, days, manner, and circumstances 
of his death and Resurrection, in the power of his 
own followers, as well as the Jews and Romans, to 
test the truth of his mission, and pronounce Him an 
impostor or the Messiah in his own lifetime, on the 
spot itself of his death. He put it in the power of 
everybody there and then, by prophecies bearing on 
his own person, to prove his mission whether it was 
from God or not. He puts it in our power of after 
centuries by other prophecies bearing on his mystic 
person here, — his Church, — to prove it by other tests 
which his followers and enemies could not then apply. 
Mohammedanism then does not pretend to either 
miracles or prophecy, — does Buddhism, Brahminism, 
or any other religion in the world ? 

Inf. You do not mean to assert that prophecy is 
entirely limited to Christianity ? 

Chk. Certainly. Infidels have fallen into the habit 
of speaking of this and that element of Christianity, 
as if they were elements also of every religion on 
the surface of the globe. You know prophecy to 
have preceded Christianity. Christianity is the 
European religion, the religion of your country ; 
all religions are in your opinion much the same, and 
if prophecy be a part of Christianity, it must be, you 
infer, part also of every other religion. Such is the 
process you call "intellectual induction." Well, 
name the religion, ancient or modern, except Chris- 
tianity, which advances the faintest claim to the 



MISSION AND MIRACLES. 121 

Divine evidence of prophecy, of successions of 
prophets, of prophecies from the creation to the 
consummation of the world ? 

Inf. The challenge, I apprehend, is new. 

Che. As old as Isaiah. ''Produce your cause, saith 
the Lord ; bring forth your strong reasons, saith the 
King of Jacob. Let them bring them forth and show 
us what shall happen : let them show the former 
things, what they be, that we may consider them, 
and know the latter end of them ; or declare as things 
to come. Show the things that are to come hereafter. 
Who hath declared from the beginning, that we may 
know? and before, that we may say. He is righteous? 
yea, there is none that showeth, yea, there is none 
that declareth. They are all vanity ; their works are 
nothing." ^ It was unanswerable then : can you 
answer it now? From the whole non-Scriptural 
annals of mankind supply me with one single written 
prediction delivered and known one hundred years 
before its realization ? 

Inf. Tou thus affirm no proj)hecies to have ever 
existed among mankind except such as are recorded 
in Scripture. 

Chr. Tes ; but I do not assert that the knowledge 
of them was in all cases derived from the Scriptures. 
The deeply seated presentiments in the minds of 
certain nations as to their times and destinies, which, 
more than any external circumstances, formed their 
character, were the prophecies of God written, as his 
law was, on their consciences, without hand. In no 
other way can, for example, the prophetic spirit of 

1 Isaiah xli. 
6 



122 MESSIANIC PSALMS. 

the Koman people of old as to their national destinies 
be satisfactorily solved. How far back such proph- 
ecies went — by what channels they were connected 
with the Primal teachings of God to Adam, and with 
the oral traditions of the Antediluvian Church — what 
coloring they assumed from the various religions 
through which they passed, are inquiries not within 
the scope of our present investigation. My statement 
is, that, except as heralding the religion of Christ, 
we have no record of prophecy as an element in any 
other religion whatever. This great mark of God 
is utterly wanting in each and all religions except 
Christianity. What we have in lieu of it in other 
religions are attempts at certain make-shifts for it, 
oracles, soothsayings, auguries, divinations, palmistry, 
haruspications, or direct efforts to open channels of 
communication with Satan and the powers of evil. 
But none has ever put forth a title to one written, 
recorded prophecy. 

Int. But I will observe again that you may have 
so drawn up your Creed, as to fit into it these multi- 
fold prophecies of the Scriptures. Pre-acquainted 
with the predictions, you may have invented a Messiah 
with life, incidents, and death to correspond in detail 
with them. Your Messiah would be cited to prove the 
truth of the prophecies, and your prophecies would be 
cited to prove the Messiahship of your Christ. The 
possibility of such a scheme you will, I suppose, admit. 

Chr. Your supposition entirely overthrows New- 
man's statement, ''that the Psalms can in no way 
be fixed on Messiah ;" if they cannot, how could the 
Psalms or the other Scriptures have originated the idea 



MESSIAOTC PSALMS. 123 

of a Messiah ? This question, however, lies between 
Newman and yon : we as Christians do not meddle 
with it. Either the prophecies of the Old Testa- 
ment are snflBcient to have formed in men's minds a 
strong, clear, broad outline of the future Messiah, or 
they are not. If they are, then Newman and the 
Infidels who aver they " can in no way be fixed on 
Messiah" are clearly in error. Now that they are 
sujfficient is proved by the fact that all the nations 
to whom such prophecies are known concur in fix- 
ing them on the Messiah. If, on the other hand, 
they are not suflficient, how came such facts to be so 
concentrated in the life, death, and resurrection of a 
certain man, as to induce whole nations to affirm 
that these ancient writings are positively nothing 
less than representations in various forms of such 
life and death ? How came the life and death of 
Jesus Christ to be such as to open up the Scriptures 
in an entirely new, yet as these nations believe, cor- 
respondent and harmonious sense from their com- 
mencement to their end ? And how came they 
again with Him to cease and determine ? 

LsT. The difficulty is plain. Abolish Christ,the Scrip- 
tures, be they prophetical or not, are a cipher without 
a key. Abolish prophecy, the life of Christ as a fact 
believed in by half the world. Christian and Moham- 
medan alike, becomes a greater, not a less perplexity. 

Chr. Infidelity would solve it, as Newman does, 
by ignoring the existence of Christ ; by doing which 
he subverts his previous position of the non-Messianic 
character of the Scriptures. If Christ never existed, 
th^ whole Christian world has nevertheless, for 



124: MESSIANIC PSALMS. 

eighteen centuries, built up their faith on a Mes- 
siah — Christ or not — seen and found by them in the 
Scriptures. To affirm in the face of such a fact that 
the Scriptures are not thoroughly, and to their core. 
Messianic, would be to permit a few InjBdels to deny 
what the world by its universal act on this very 
point, has for centuries witnessed and verified. If 
they are not Messianic to N'ewman, they ever have 
been, and still are, to the whole mind of Christen- 
dom. The world has formed and put together a 
Messiah out of the Scriptures. The Messiah, so 
built, has certain features of power and character 
universally assigned Him— suffering and sorrow on 
earth being a principal trait in all the delineations. 
This could not be, if the Scriptures were not, to the 
common-sense and reading of mankind, Messianic in 
the highest degree. Certain Jews in Palestine, be- 
fore modern Christendom commenced, drew precisely 
the same picture of theirs, as modern Christendom 
does of its Messiah, from the same Scriptures. If 
Luke drew an imaginary Messiah, the imaginary one 
we draw from the same source, corresponds to his in 
every respect. If we both derive these images from 
Scripture, then there is something in the whole tenor 
of Scripture impressive of one and the same idea 
of the Messiah on both the Jewish and European 
mind ; and that in periods of civilization differing 
in all things, but this idea, from each other. The 
existence of Christ can thus only be derived at the 
cost of exalting to a higher degree than Christen- 
dom itself has ever done the Messianic character 
of the Scriptures, for from this reasoning it would 



THE 'O A.oyog^ or life-woed of god. 125 

result that they testified to Christ to such a degree 
that the world did not require a real Christ to sub- 
stantiate their faith in such plenitude of testimony. 
This, indeed, is the only way Volney, an Infidel 
of less erudition but greater genius than Newman, 
can account for the universality of the recognition 
of the Messiah. "AH the world, pervaded by these 
and other ancient writings, expected Him; some 
said they had seen Him : forthwith all the world 
believed them ; the acquiescence was as profound as 
the expectation had been universal." Observe how 
one Infidel upsets the other. 

Inf. I side here rather with Volney than l^ewman. 

Chr. The contradictory theories of Infidels on 
their own theme of Infidelity, would form an in- 
structive volume. 

Inf. You have not, however, introduced, as I ex- 
pected, the Omniscience of God to account for the 
fulfilment of Prophecy. 

Chr. Omniscience must always to us be an ab- 
straction. I do not build any truth on abstractions 
of the Deity. To me God is the personal God : He 
is Jesus Christ. 

Inf. Christians, I know, call him The '' Word and 
Power of God." The " Word of God," applied to a 
living person, is a very strange expression. 

Chr. Anv '' word " whatever is above inanimate 
or material nature, above mere animal nature. A 
" word " is not only something identically and in- 
separably one with reason, mind, spirit ; but it con- 
stitutes also the power of the expression and im- 
pression upon others. Our present words in refer- 



126 THE 'O Aoyof, or life-word of god. 

ence to our thoughts and their expression are a very- 
faint, unsubstantial shadowing forth of what Christ is 
with reference to the ahnightj mind and its expres- 
sion. His relationship to the Father in this respect 
is the original — we are only a human similitude of it. 
The Greek term, 'O Koyog rov Geo?; means not only 
the Word of God, but the Mind also, of which that 
Word is the expression and the power. That Word 
has come to us who are now its ruined and broken 
similitudes in embodied form — in Jesus Christ. He 
alone, therefore, is to us the Word, the Mind, and the 
Expression of God. Except in and through Him we 
know nothing of God except as a vacant abstraction. 

Inf. Do you mean that the '0 Aoyoq existed as 
such from eternity, in and with God, before it assumed 
Incarnation, as Jesus Christ, in this world ? 

Chr. Yes. "The 'O Aoyo^ was made flesh, and dwelt 
among us." ^ The Incarnation of the '0 Koyog as Jesus 
Christ, took place eighteen centuries ago. The ex- 
istence of the 'O Koyog as God, and with God, pre- 
cedes creation : precedes all time : is from eternity. 

Inf. I understand now the immense significance 
your Church attaches to the term, " The Word of 
God," as applied to Jesus Christ. She thereby up- 
holds Him as the Yery God of Yery God. 

Chr. She holds Him to be, as the Scriptures say, 
To nXrjpojfjia rrjg 6eoT7]Tog GcoixarLfccdg — the Plenitude 
of the Deity in bodily form. To other intelligences 
the '0 Aoyo^ may be Deity, otherwise than oofjLarifccjg : 
the expressions of the Deity, by and through the 'O 
Aoyo^ of God, may be infinite in number and aspects 

* John i. 14. 



THE '0 Aoyog, ok life- word of god. 127 

throughout the varied extent of the universe. But 
with that we human beings have nothing to do. 
To us He has come, and is apprehensible in Jesus 
Christ only. His oneness with the Child of the 
Virgin Mother is that Incarnation of Deity — both 
God and man — which we acknowledge Jesus Christ 
to have been, and still in heaven at this moment to 
remain. Such as that Incarnation is now in heaven 
we have faith that we too shall become. Other in- 
telligences from other realms in the universe may 
in heaven be glorified in that form which it pleases 
the 'O Koyog to take upon Him in appearing among 
them : there may thus again be infinite forms of 
beauty and glory besides that which we of the race 
of Adam shall enjoy among the new creations of 
the '0 Aoyo^ in heaven. With that again we have 
nothing to do. Ou7' form of glory will be that of the 
glorified God-man, Jesus Christ. And in this Jesus 
Christ alone comes God to us now : in Him alone 
does He veil Himself: in Him alone does He unveil 
Himself to us : in Him alone does He permit us to 
see, feel, embrace, and dwell with Him. As in man 
only is there " soul " in this world, so in Jesus Christ 
only is there '' God " in this world — whatever our 
souls possess of God passes to us through Him. 

Inf. Ton believe the '0 Koyog to be the medium 
of the action of the Supreme Being upon the whole 
universe — hj its Incarnation as Jesus Christ, Jesus 
Christ became the Mediator between this world also 
and God. He was the union of the '0 Aoyo^ with 
manhood. According to this view, Jesus Christ 
must of necessity be God. 



128 THE 'O Aoyo^, OR LIFE- WORD OF GOD. 

Chr. Yes. The 'O Aoyog being God, his Incarna- 
tion, by whatever name we call it, must be God. 
The only question, therefore, for faith is, was Jesns 
Christ the Incarnation of the 'O Aoyo^? I am obliged, 
by the deficiency of our English language, which 
uses " word " as something distinct from " reason, 
thought, or spirit," to go back to the Greek, but 
henceforth you will understand me to use the expres- 
sion "Word of God " in the full Greek, not the mu- 
tilated English sense. 

Int. Ah ! then you conclude our English not in 
itself to be capable of the expression of Christianity ? 

Chr. The Saxon is utterly incapable of its ex- 
pression. English is more Latin than Saxon, but 
when it desires to be precise and scientific, it imme- 
diately incorporates itself with the Greek. It pleased 
God to reveal his Gospel to us in Greek. Every 
scholar knows Greek to be the first of languages — 
to be that especial language which, above all others, 
defines the object by the word. We, in our English 
translation, utterly lose the Divine sense of the ex- 
pression " '0 AoyogP To a Greek it would instantly 
convey the sense of every thing intellectual, mental, 
spiritual in God, appealing to all the same faculties 
in ourselves. The very expression was the introduc- 
tion of a new supremacy. To us the fulness of that 
expression is lost. 

Inf. But you do not identify the correct knowledge 
of revelation with Greek and Latin. 

Chr. All civilization hitherto has proceeded en- 
tirely in those two languages. If ''The Times" 
newspaper attempted to-morrow to write a leading 



THE 'O Aoyo^, OR LIFE-WORD OF GOD. 129 

article in mere Anglo-Saxon, it conld not do it : it 
would discover that it was attempting to nse sand 
for steel, the forms of barbarians to express the su- 
periorities of a higher necessity. The test of mental 
civilization in an individual, or in a nation, consists 
in the use of one or other of those two languages for 
the expression of thought. Immediately we ascend 
above those animal necessities, which may be equally 
well expressed in Saxon, Hindostanee, Malay, Che- 
rokee, or any savage tongue, we are violently flung 
back upon some dialect of that language in which 
the New Testament is written. Advocating, there- 
fore, the translation of the Gospel into every tongue, 
I yet affirm the true understanding of that Gospel 
must be found in the tongue in which it pleased God 
to deliver it ; nay more, that we shall never really 
civilize the world, till through such a translation 
we have brought every nation into either a Greek 
or a Latin form of thought-expression. This is 
no theory ; it is broad, plain fact. Language is 
civilization ; all civilization, humanly speaking, runs 
into one of the sister dialects of Greece or Home. 
I find Christianity also revealed in that language : I 
am compelled to infer that, by this very fact, God has 
established a certain indissolubility between civili- 
zation and Christianity. 

Inf. But we English do not speak Latin. 

Chr. AVe certainly speak more Latin than we do any 
other language. Take up any book now published : 
the language is three-fourths Latin or Latinized : for 
still higher accuracy or science, we go to Greek. 
Take up Milton, Shakspeare, Macaulay, Hume — 

6« 



130 THE 'O Aoyo^, OR LIFE-WOKD OF GOD. 

whatever the sentiments may be, the medium of 
communication is a branch of that language which 
God selected as the expression of his Gospel; and 
beyond it we find ourselves utterly inefficient to rise. 
Will you invent now a new word for a spiritual or 
even physical sensation ? 

Inf. How — ^I can invent plenty of words. 

Chk. 'No. Certain sounds you might attempt to 
impose on the world as words, as certain compositions 
are attempted to be imposed on the world as music 
— but no word defining any other than an animal 
want can you find, use, or impose, unless you derive 
it from what we usually call classical sources — He- 
brew, Greek, or Latin. A new word is a new idea : 
to comprehend a new generic idea demands a new 
faculty ; a new faculty can be given by God only : 
when a new language, therefore, with its new ideas, 
overspreads the globe, I know that such an efi'ect can 
be produced by God only. 

Inf. I really do not see that language is so won- 
derful a thing. 

Chr. Pray what is a " word ?" You speak to me ; 
I understand you : you speak to Westminster Palace ; 
it is stone, magnificent stone, but neither hears nor 
answers ; neither does the sun, the moon, or universe. 
Address yourself in words — the outpouring of your 
soul — to all creation ; all creation flows on insensible 
as the river at your feet. But say one " word" to 
your little daughter in your arms — lo ! how she re- 
sponds, laughs, loves, and delights in your confidence, 
your address, your very notices of her : she is capable 



INORGANIC NATURE. 131 

of language, the universe is not. You have in your 
arms a nobler creature than all that universe, which 
can neither ff^el, hear, nor respond. 

Inf. a little child more wonderful than the whole 
material universe ! 

Chr. You know it is so : matter is nothing, the 
soul is every thing; of the soul, language is and 
must be the expression. Compare the Pyramids, 
St. Peter's Cathedral, the world, the order and ad- 
justment of the material universe, which cannot re- 
spond to one spiritual impulse within you, to the 
little child which instantly responds to your own 
heart, life, and love ; which says " my father" to you, 
and " our Father which art in heaven" to God. Is 
there any comparison between this child and the 
whole of what you Infidels deify as God — senseless, 
unconscious, wordless clay and stone nature ? Can 
all nature speak one " word ?" has it one affection ? 
would it feel if you and all mankind perished most 
wretchedly to-morrow? ]^o, it does not; a little 
child, an infant, has that in it which proves it to 
be of a higher architecture than all the material 
universe. 

Inf. a child, beyond all controversy, is a mystery ; 
he may become a Robespierre or a Newton ; a Vol- 
taire or a Wilberforce ; and there is something in 
him for which perhaps the whole material world is 
created. 

Chr. The material world cannot, I think, " suffer ?" 

Inf. Suffer, feel sense of pain ? — of course not. 

Chr. Then the very sense of " suffering" infers a 



132 JESUS CHRIST THE LIFE-WORD OF GOD. 

certain superiority over senselessness. But neither 
can it utter one syllable of language, it cannot 
speak ? 

Inf. 'No. 

Chr. All inanimate creation, all the nature which 
Infidels worship as God, cannot do that which your 
little child on your bosom, can, and from very in- 
stinct does do — turn to you, to your love, speak and 
confide in you — and you in the same love, by a 
thousand ways it cannot understand, express in a 
thousand diff'erent phrases of language your identity 
of heart and soul with it. Who meets you in your 
child? 

Inf. Ah! I see — nature, physical nature, cannot 
speak. 

Chr. Your child does " speak," uses " words," 
your heart responds to them : you are in communi- 
cation with all its lovely and heart-absorbing devel- 
opments. Christ comes in and teaches this child the 
great truth in its nature ; teaches its soul to believe, 
''• I have a father in heaven as well as on earth ; I 
am the child — far above insensible nature — of the 
God and Creator of nature." Would you oppo&e 
such teaching ? 

Inf. Does Christ so come ? 

Chr. Drop theory, does He not ? How does Christ 
come as a fact to the infants of this kingdom? By 
the sacraments of his Church, and those sacraments 
present Him as the 'O Aoyog of God. Unless He is 
so, God does not receive them at all. He being God, 
it is God who receives them. Christendom has thus 
for centuries received Jesus Christ as verily and in- 



JESUS CHRIST THE LIFE- WORD OF GOD. 133 

deed the 'O Aoyog of God, communicating Himself 
to us both in baptism and the eucharist. Tlie child 
is therefore thus, what the material universe in all 
its grandeur cannot be, of God — the recipient of the 
'O Aoyof. 

Inf. You do not then admit communion with God 
in any other way than through Jesus Christ? 

Chr. I am not permitted to. 

Inf. JS^ot permitted to ! How so ? 

Chr. Can you imagine it possible for any created 
being to have the power of approaching or knowing 
God in any other way or form than that in which it 
pleases God Himself to be approached? The Al- 
mighty may, for aught I know, have, through the 
boundless works of his infinitude, millions of aspects 
in which through the 'O Koyog He reveals Himself to 
other intelligences. To us He reveals Himself in one 
only : that one is Christ. He alone is to us XapaKrrjp 
TTjg TTToaraaecjg Oeov : in Him only, therefore, is it 
possible for me to know or be in communion with 
God. If I seek for God out of Christ, I am seeking 
Him where I am not permitted to. 

Inf. I as an Infidel seek Him in Nature. 

Chr. Is material nature susceptible of intelligence 
— above all, of the intelligence of God — of the 'O 
Aoyog of God ? Can it understand your words, heart, 
or mind, much less that of the Almighty ? Has it 
sense, reason, or language either to receive or to com- 
municate God or mind ? 

Inf. Certainly not. 

Chr. How then can you find in nature what na- 
ture itself is incapable of receiving or expressing? 



!3+ JESUS CHRIST 'JHK LIFE-WORD OF GOD. 

Yow may deduce this or that conclusion from the 
study of nature; so may I, so may any one; but 
these deductions are nothing after all but those of 
our own individual minds ; nature herself emits 
neither voice nor language ; she can say nothing 
about herself, far less a word about God. Being 
without mind, reason, or soul, I cannot see how 
nature can possibly express herself in any way to 
you about mind, reason, or soul, infinitely less of the 
mind, reason, and spirit of God. 

Inf. Granted ; but nature, dead, dumb, and sense- 
less herself, is nevertheless such a creation as enables 
my mind, without any revelation, to form a true idea 
of the God of nature. 

Chr. We shall see that presently; suffice it now 
to observe, such an idea is at the best yours only. I 
may draw from the same nature a diametrically dif- 
ferent idea of God ; others may draw theirs different 
from, and condemnatory of both ; thus, as was the 
case w^ith the pre-Christian philosophers of Greece 
and Asia, nature is open to infinite interpretations of 
God, no God, Gods, multiplicity of Gods, every thing 
God, nothing God. I would request you to make a 
list of all the variations in Christendom in the in- 
terpretations of the Scripture, or the Church ; I 
would then contrast these variations with the ''ideas 
of God" derived from nature as contained, for 
instance, in Stanley's History of Philosophy ; the 
former would be unity itself compared with the 
countless contradictions, all equally derived from or 
imputed to nature in the latter. Your " nature " 
has thus been searched, was for four thousand years 



JESUS CHRIST THE LIFE-WORD OF GOD. 135 

searched by men of high and acute intellect for God 
and religion — the result was, each investigator drew 
from it conclusions contradictory of the rest. We, 
on the other hand, point to all Christendom, not to 
philosophers only, but to the masses as one body 
united in one common conclusion of Creed derived 
from the Church and the Scriptures. Nature mean- 
while being perfectly passive and inert, neither could 
nor ever has expressed herself to these philosophers 
of old, nor to any Infidel of modern times. The 
term " nature" is therefore, in this sense, your own 
impression only of things derived from certain pres- 
ent visibilities : it is you who say so and so — nature 
herself says nothing. When we, on the contrary, 
affirm the Scriptures say thus and thus, we put those 
Scriptures before your eyes ; you read it thus and 
thus written ; be these Scriptures true or false, you 
are obliged to admit both the writing and its plain 
unmistakable meaning. When you Infidels adduce 
nature, we require that nature to speak as plainly to 
us as these Scriptures do to you ; but, lo ! she is per- 
fectly dumb, or speaks directly the contrary to us of 
what you affirm she speaks to you. 

Inf. But I understand you to go beyond this re- 
jection of the material universe as capable of being 
to us the '0 Aoyog of God, and to state that you 
desire to know nothing of God, except so far as He 
has veiled or unveiled Himself in Jesus Christ, " the 
Word." 

Chr. God is everywhere, I know that ; but in 
what \ r /' 7] 1 know not. I am not to know. 
Everywhere I see his power and energizing, but 1 



136 JESUS CHRIST THE LIFE- WORD OF GOD. 

do not everywhere see his mercy or his love , I see, 
on the contrary, very awful things — " terrors" — to 
be co-extensive with the action of his power. If I 
attempt to behold him unveiled in any way, but in 
Him who has become to us " the way, the truth, 
and the life of God," I know not in which of these 
aspects of terror I should meet Him. But of this I 
should be sure, that meeting Him thus in the way of 
Infidelity and disobedience, it would be the death 
and not the life of the soul. 

Inf. And for this reason you decline to build 
arguments on the abstract attributes of God, such as 
his omniscience ? 

Chr. They are terms of infinity not definable to, 
nor graspable by, my nature. God, I know, must 
be omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, — but what 
omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence are, I know 
not. No finite faculty can know. How, therefore, 
can I reason with terms the meaning of which 
transcends both your nature and mine, human na- 
ture altogether. 

Inf. Does not the fact of prophecy proceed on the 
ground of the prescience of God ? 

Chr. Time is no element in God. ^'Pre," or '^ be- 
fore," cannot in any way apply to Him as Deity. To 
creatures, the subjects of time, is it alone in strict- 
ness applicable. God knows all things " before" not 
relatively to Himself, but to us. 

Inf. Be it so. Such and such things were to 
come to pass ; God foreseeing them — relatively to 
us — so revealed them beforehand ; they came to 
pass : by which act we establish, in the ordinary ac- 



JESUS CHRIST THE LIFE-WORD OF GOD. 137 

ceptation of the terms, his prescience and omniscience. 
Is it not so ? 

Chr. I cannot accept your statement in its present 
form. 

Inf. But we are compelled to use terms of time in 
speaking of Deity. 

Chr. Certainly, and terms of sense. But you 
cannot, I think, reason upon such terms upon the 
abstract attributes of Deity. In relativities between 
the Deity and man we must use terms of sense, 
space, and time, — man is not capable of other notions 
or conceptions than such as are represented in or 
by these Formatives of thought. But in reasoning on 
the Deity Himself, apart from the relativities of 
man and creation, all such terms being on the face 
of them inapplicable, must be rejected. 

Inf. Then, in fact, these terms not being appli- 
cable to the Deity as Deity, and we not being capable 
of any ideas but what are represented by such terms, 
we cannot reason about pure Deity itself at all. 

Chr. We cannot. " Who by searching can find out 
God ?" And this impossibility puts the axe summarily 
to the root of all Deism. 

Inf. How applied ? 

Chr. How can you, being capable of any other 
ideas than such as space, time, and the senses re- 
present and convey, form any idea whatever of the 
Being to whom these originals of all your ideas do 
not and cannot in any mode apply? The Deity 
therefore of ''Deism" must necessarily always be 
not a mere abstraction from all sense only, but 
one incapable of being represented to, as he is in 



A- 



138 JESTJS CHRIST THE LIFE- WORD OF GOD. 

truth of being conceived by the human mind at 
all. 

Inf. I am sometimes impressed with that convic- 
tion myself. 

Chr. Creation cannot supply us with any true 
symbol of the pure Deity ; therefore God has solemnly 
commanded us never to presume either to take or to 
make any thing in heaven or earth as a " likeness of 
him." The " Nature" which Infidelity magnifies, so 
far from being God, is not itself in its vast univer- 
sality in any way, kind, or degree, capable of supply- 
ing us with even " any likeness or true symbol of 
the supreme Deity." He is as utterly different from 
nature, from all the works of his hands, as the can- 
vas is from the mind of the painter, or the stone is 
from the soul of the architect. Apart from Chris- 
tianity men can have no definite or sensible idea, 
apart from Christ no sensible representative, of God. 
All other attempted ideas evaporate on being grasped 
at by the mind in vacuum and nothingness ; they 
remind one of the Druidic tenet that the " Hollow" 
of the heavens itself was God — the older form of the 
Greek Dios, and the Roman Coelum with its Diespi- 
ter or Jupiter. Would your Infidelity return to this 
primaeval worship of nature ? 

Inf. But the prescience of God is at any rate 
demonstrated by the truthfulness of prophecy. 

Chr. Do you mean that God sees what will befall 
long before, relatively to man, it does befall? 

Inf. Thus I mean — God, foreseeing what is here- 
after to happen, reveals it to certain men, who there- 



JESUS CHRIST THE LIFE- WORD OF GOD. 139 

upon speak it or commit it to writing : so spoken or 
written it is called " Prophecj^ ;" this Prophecy, 
being the revelation ages before of events which, in 
the time assigned, really come to pass, is evidence 
of the prescience of God. So, at least, most of 
your modern writers on Christianity affirm and 
inculcate. 

Chr. You are very earnest about this abstraction 
of Omniscience. 

Inf. Do not you concur in their view ? 

Chr. They may be right ; but it is not my view, 
nor, 1 think, the teaching of the Scriptures. 

Inf. In what respect do you demur? Certain 
things are to come to pass : so far, clear. God in His 
Word foretells men that they are to come to pass ; 
as He foretells, it so befalls ; — does not that prove 
the foreknowledge of God as to future events ? 

Chr. All this logic is, to my mind, wrong, because 
anti-Scriptural. 

Inf. Give your own view, then. 

Chr. The Word of God states that certain events 
shall come to pass : because the Word so states, 
therefore these events are certain to come to pass. 
The Word is the cause of the events it presignifies. 

Inf. The views are radicallj^ opposed. 

Chr. Quite so. Your view makes " the Word " 
simply declarative ; mine makes it causal and effective 
also of what it declares. Your statement would 
stand thus — " Because all these things were to be 
done, the Scriptures of the Prophets revealed them 
beforehand." Mine — "All these thino:s were done 



140 MATERIAL FATALISM CONSIDERED. 

that the Scriptures of the Prophets might be fulfilled." 
And this latter is actually the way in which the 
Scriptures themselves deliver this statement. 

Inf. I had a cogent argument prepared upon the 
modern Omniscience view. 

Chr. I suspected as much. Material Fatalism in 
men and things ? 

Inf. Exactly. 

Chr. And Prophecy merely the pre-announce- 
ment of fatalities which, prophesied or not, were to 
happen with or without the Word ? 

Inf. Truly so. 

Chr. And God, the mere revealer of the fatalities 
He could neither avert nor prevent — the ISTuntius, 
the heathen Mercury, to man of some force or power 
above himself called Fate or Destiny ? The Greek 
mythology revived of Jupiter and the Parcae ? 

Inf. And my argument would have been, I con- 
ceive, irrefutable. The admission by you of Pre- 
science in this modern sense, would have destroyed 
the Omnipotence of God. If God foresees truly, that 
which He foresees must, of irrevocable necessity, 
happen : that very necessity destroys all power on 
his part of preventing or controlling the future— 
therefore his omnipotence. 

Chr. And it is on such gross misconception as 
this of God, that Infidels conclude that God is not a 
Being to be prayed to by men. He is a God, they 
think, whose power is overruled by some chain of 
necessities or fatalities, some series of natural causes, 
which, in despite of Him, must and will hold on their 
course and law. Or if not this, He is a God who 



MATERIAL FATALISM CONSIDERED. 141 

ages ago has parted with his omnipotence ; was at 
one time, but for some reason or other has long 
ceased to be, the Almighty. Something is above 
Him ; and that something " hears not prayer." 

Inf. Well, such is one of our theories. 

Chr. Certainly, if Material Nature be that some- 
thing, it cannot, as we observed, do what those little 
children playing on the lawn do — •" hear :" it can 
neither " hear" prayer nor any thing else. But do 
you hold such a thing as that to be above God ? 
" He that made the ear, shall He Himself not hear ? 
He that made the eye, shall He not see ?" Matter 
itself neither sees nor hears ; how then can it have 
made the ear and the eye, the hearing and the 
seeing in those children? Your argument, there- 
fore, comes out thus : " Material ]!*^ature, the series 
of causes and effect, is superior to God ; but this 
little child is evidently superior to all material na- 
ture, and therefore superior also to God." Is this 
"Intellect?" 

Inf. There may be other causes besides those con- 
nected with material nature, which render prayer an 
absurdity. 

Chr. State them. 

Inf. To do so is beyond my knowledge ; but this 
is clear, that if all nature be a series of unalterable 
causes and effects, no prayer can in the slightest de- 
gree produce a change in that series. 

Chr. That is Material Fatalism, is it not? 

Inf. Yes. You must, if such theory be true, ad- 
mit that to pray to it to change its course, is as ridic- 
ulous as to pray to the sun not to set, the light not 



142 MATERIAL FATALISM CONSIDERED, 

to shine, the night not to come, to man and beast 
not to die. 

Chr. Perfectly so — quite as ridiculous. You, on 
the other hand, must admit that whether prayer be 
an absurdity or not, depends entirely on the truth or 
falsehood of this material fatalism being the^ Omnipo- 
tent God. 

Inf. Why, yes, I think I must. 

Chr. If this Power be one grade above insensible 
matter, it must at least have the faculty which even 
a brute possesses — that of hearing — it must be able 
at least to " hear." Must it not ? 

Inf. K it be aught above inert matter, I suppose 
it must. 

Chr. If it can hear a prayer, is it able to grant it? 

Inf. Certainly not — how could it without changing 
the whole unchangeable series of causes and effects? 

Chr. 'Not being able to " grant" even one prayer, 
what becomes of its omnipotence ? Is this the thing 
which, if not able to [' hear," is lower than the brutes, 
if able to hear and not to grant, is more helpless 
than the brutes — for even a sheep will give its milk 
to the dumb beseechingness of the lamb — the great 
Power that, according to Infidelity, overrides and 
controls God ? By your own reason, whatever it be. it 
is, at the best, as helpless as a stone in the air, which 
must come down to the earth : it can neither change 
aught in its own motion, nor effect the slightest 
change for good or evil in others. Why, Caliban is 
an Apollo of grace and energy to such a monstrous 
chimera as this God of Infidelity. 

Inf. But if I admit that, whatever it be, it can 



MATERIAL FATALISM CONSIDERED. 143 

hear and grant, I entirely give up my position that 
prayer is an absurdity. If it be a power which can 
hear and grant, it may grant prayer and supplica- 
tion ; and if so, then also it may choose to make 
prayer and supplication to it, the very reason and 
condition why it pleases to do thus and thus. Prayer 
to it would thus be what you Christians hold it to 
be, of all services the most reasonable, as well as the 
most profitable, which can be rendered to God. If 
I make, therefore, even the first admission — that this 
Power can '' hear" — I am dragged on by my own 
concessions to be at last a Christian, taking a Chris- 
tian view of individual and national prayer. 

Chr. Yes — your reason obliges you, against your 
will, to be herein a Christian. 

Inf. But if, on the contrary, I answer the first 
question, "can it hear?" in the negative, I must 
hold that this Power which does not permit God to 
grant prayers, is itself something inferior in organi- 
zation to an ox or dog — which will never do. 

Chr. Not until the gods of Egypt, — cats, calves, 
and crocodiles, — are to be the worship of England : 
for even these, you see, have senses superior to your 
" series of causes" Deity. Reconstruct Infidelity in 
any form you please, that form has already been 
encountered and ground into dust by Christianity ; 
but this form of matter-worship is the lowest idolatry 
history records. Bring together the material universe 
— the sun, the moon, the stellar worlds — if worlds 
they be — the planets, the earth, clothe them in their 
aggregate with all their laws and properties in vest- 
ures of golden light, describe them in the fullest 



144 matp:rial fatalism considered. 

and most gorgeous diction, surround them with the 
most glowing and brilliant coruscations of poetry, 
what in plain fact are they but such stuff as we 
every instant tread under foot, or use as subservient 
to the basest physical necessities of life ? What is 
there nobler in a lump of dirt the size of our earth 
more than there is in that small lump yonder in your 
gardener's hand? Or in a collection of material 
light as vast as the sun more than in a taper ? Or 
does magnitude alone, be it that of earth, air, fire, 
or water, constitute the idol of this kind of Infidel- 
ity? Ancient philosophy, which did worship the 
" Anima or Mens Mundi," the spirit which, as many 
thought, animated and was the vital power of the 
"moles" or material universe, recoiled from such 
senseless idolatry as the adoration of the " moles" it- 
self; nevertheless this is the gross clay of which 
modern Infidelity would manufacture an image as 
gross as its material — without senses, feelings, affec- 
tions, speech, reason, or soul, and place it as Fate or 
Destiny above the will and government of God. I 
grant to pray to such a thing as this would be the 
same as to kneel to and supplicate the stock of yon- 
der tree. The poor heathen of old worshipped a 
part, modern Infidelity would worship the whole of 
this material world. I see not in what you differ, 
except in this, that he reduced his worship to bodily, 
while you confine it to intellectual, practice ; but in 
both the cases the worship is literally that of the 
most despicable element in creation — inert matter. 

Inf. We, as modern infidels, surely differ from 
those old stock-idolaters. 



MATERIAL FATALISM CONSIDERED. 145 

Chr. I do not see that you do a whit in the prin- 
ciple of your worship. The heathen selected some 
material object in nature — stone, wood, metal ; he 
fashioned this into his idol: the idol was as its 
material — it could neither hear, see, feel, move, 
think, nor speak ; yet this mass of brute matter, 
shaped by his own hands, the heathen set up, treated, 
and worshipped as God. Infidelity goes even further 
— ^for it would, by its own acknowledgment, put 
something above God which is, in every respect, the 
counterpart of this stone idol — -something that can- 
not " hear " a single prayer, or respond to the throb- 
bing of a single heart among the millions of man- 
kind. Wherein, then, is the difi'erence? 

Inf. I never analyzed Infidelity by such a light as 
you are now applying to it. 

Chr. Whatever your " Order of Nature " may 
mean, it must be something either living or dead, 
having or not having life. If it has no life, if it be 
merely the action of inorganic matter on matter, 
or the mere properties of matter in operation, 
such as gravitation, to suppose it in any sense God, 
much more above God, must infer mental idolatry 
of the same gross principle as that of the heathen. 
If it has life, it can — unless it be of the lowest order 
of life — " hear," and thus again you come to a start- 
ing-point which will inevitably conduct you to 
Christianity and Prayer. And as for " intellect " in 
this question — here is your Infidelity trying to per- 
suade "the intellect" of man to regard as above 
God something that cannot do what every father in 
the world does to his child — hear its voice in prayer : 

7 



146 MATERIAL FATALISM CONSIDERED. 

you would reduce '' intellect " to the worship of such 
" matter " as this ! 

Inf. But there yet remains immense difficulty 
connected with this question of Prayer. 

Chr. What is it ? 

Inf. If all things were from the first settled and 
ordained by Infinite Wisdom, such Infinite Wisdom 
would never, at the entreaty of such creatures as we 
are, alter aught in the scheme and succession of pre- 
established harmonies which it has thus decreed — 
and thus again we do not escape Fatalism. If there 
be such Fatality, such " an Order of Mature," result- 
ing from either the properties of Nature itself, or 
imposed by a Power above nature and its properties, 
in either case it is clearly useless to pray ; for this 
Fatality or Order must extend to the minutest as 
well as the most extensive operations and concerns 
of life and existence. Whether, therefore, the Su- 
preme Power be vested in a dead or living cause of 
Fatality, the utter inutility of prayer — and with 
prayer, of all worship and devotion whatever — is 
demonstrated. How does Christianity solve such a 
knot as this — how can it reconcile its belief in the 
power of prayer to aff'ect God, with its belief also 
that the whole series of causes and efi'ects have been 
already immutably settled by the infinite wisdom of 
God? 

Chr. We think our Faith in perfect harmony 
throughout with itself and Reason in this matter. We 
utterly reject all such infidel terms as Fatality, Des- 
tiny, Order of Causes, as would in the remotest de- 
gree imply that God is not now — at this. very moment, 



THE WORD OF GOD THE ONLY FATE. 14:7 

as He was from the beginning, and ever will be — ab- 
solutely and supremely Almighty. We deny all 
the principles and ideas intended to be conveyed by 
the above and similar terms : such denial forms a per- 
petual protest in the mouth of the Christian Church. 
The first article of our creed is, " that we believe in 
God the Father Almighty :" now as ever Almighty. 
Our Gloria in the Lord's Prayer is, ''Thine is the 
kingdom, the power, and the glory, for ever and 
ever." These and hundreds of like expressions of 
faith intimate that we utterly cast from us the no- 
tion that there is any destiny, fatality, necessity, but 
God Himself. He has never parted, never will part 
— to speak in human language — with his omnipo- 
tence over all things visible and invisible, matter 
and spirit, nature and grace, to any such mere phan- 
tasms and unrealities as Infidels create and name 
from the forge and coinage of their own brains. 
Christianity and Infidelity are on this point antipodes 
in time and eternity to each other. Time, as we 
said, cannot be applied to the Deity ; there are no 
such measures of mortal flux as " past" and " fu- 
ture" in Him. All these theories, therefore, of 
Fatality and Immutability and Necessary Series, 
which proceed on the basis of ''Time" as an element 
of God Himself, are to be rejected as false aud alto- 
gether repugnant to all true ideas of God. To Him 
there is nothing necessary ; to creation He Himself 
is the only necessity. The whole order of nature is 
at His mercy : He has changed and destroyed it be- 
fore : He will change and destroy it again : the uni- 
verse can no more resist any action whatever of his 



148 THE WORD OF GOD THE ONLY FATE. 

will, than the paper I now burn can this action of 
mine by which I bnrn it. He might, if He so pleased, 
abolish and cause creation to return to its original 
nothingness to-morrow. He will abolish it, as it 
now exists, and by the same omnipotence create it 
in an entirely unprecedented and more glorious form. 
And in all this there is no such thing as Time or 
Fatality to Him : from everlasting to everlasting He 
is alone " I AM"— The Almighty. 

Inf. Supposing Him to be all this, why or how is 
it that He should be aifected by human prayers? 
Why should He interfere with his own established 
order of causes and effects ? 

Chr. Eather, how know you that of this " order," 
prayer itself is not as great a law imposed on the soul 
as gravitation is on matter? 

Inf. How know I ? 

Chr. Infidelity speaks of " causes and effects ;" 
what these are it knows not ; but it observes certain 
causes, apparently the most insignificant, produce 
certain effects the most extensive and momentous; 
both are in explicit language the subjects of the 
prophecies of Scriptures. All the " effects" of Chris- 
tianity, — ^vast as they are politically and spiritually, — 
follow from one " cause," the Crucifixion. No other 
" series of causes and effects" is so plainly palpable. 
In the operation of this series, prayer, public and 
private, has always been a chief function ; neverthe- 
less, in total contradiction to your own theory, you 
cannot admit it to be a " cause" sure to produce 
certain " effects." 

Inf But the order of the universe must yet be 



THE WORD OF GOD THE ONLY FATE. 149 

something not changeable or to be affected by 
prayer. 

Chr. Prayer to God is the order of the spiritual 
universe. For a soul not to pray to God is the same 
as for an atom not to gravitate to its centre. But 
let us consider it from another point of observation 
in your theory. Christianity is the " effect" of a cer- 
tain cause, — "the crucifixion of Christ," — is it not? 

Inf. It is so. 

Chr. We have, then, a series, the links of which 
from one cause extend through eighteen successive 
centuries of effects. We know of no series in men- 
tal, spiritual, or social history either so clear or im- 
portant as this of the progression of Christianity. 

Inf. And your inference. 

Chr. If " the series of cause and effects" consti- 
tute God, or a Destiny which controls God, Christi- 
anity itself, as far as we have data to proceed upon, is 
in this world the principal part of such series ; and 
consequently prayer, a principal part of Christianity, 
must be part also of that supreme order and law 
which constitutes God and rules the universe. For 
you cannot separate prayer from Christianity, nor 
Christianity from " the causes and effects" of eigh- 
teen, more correctly, fifty centuries in the history of 
our race and world. Thus without any reference to 
God you are compelled by your own theory of Infidel 
materialism to admit the fact of " prayer" as part of 
that law of causes and effects which you would substi- 
tute for God — as the thing to which the universe bows 
and obeys. And this too, mark you, as of necessity : 
the universe has no alternative in your theory but a 



150 THE WORD OF GOD THE ONLY FATE. 

passive submission of itself to that " series of causes 
and effects" of which in the strongest, longest, and 
most indissoluble series we know, prayer is tlie 
greatest cause of the greatest effects. Christianity 
teaches the state of prayer to be the right state of a 
creature towards its Creator ; the effects of it remain 
entirely within God's hands, but Infidelity by the 
above theory renders its effects over the material 
universe itself absolutely irresistible. An infidel 
ought surely to be always " praying," always pro- 
ducing marvellous " effects" by this cause. Why 
does he not ? 

LsTF. Because he knows such effects would not in- 
evitably follow. 

Chr. Then what becomes of your theory of the 
immutable series of causes and effects apart from 
God? It clearly has no existence : apart from God, 
cause and effect do not and cannot exist ; of Him 
only is it that cause is cause, or effect, effect ; and 
again at his will or word cause ceases to be cause, 
and effect, effect. Of the truth of this doctrine we 
hold the miracles of our Lord to be incontestable 
evidence. To Him all causes and effects, material 
or immaterial, became just what He pleased. At- 
traction, gravitation, life, death, production, ceased 
or acted at his pleasure. 

Inf. And we who are Infidels hold such suspen- 
sion, destruction, or superseding of nature and its 
laws, of matter and its properties, impossible. 

Chr. And we Christians hold such not to be only 
possible, but the antagonistic idea to be subversive of 
all true conceptions of Deity. Nature and matter 



THE WOED OF GOD THE ONLY FATE. 151 

have no other law whatever than the will of their 
Oi^eator. Christ did what He pleased with them, 
does so still, and ever will so do by the mere word of 
his powxr. 

Inf. And you believe God often overrules nature 
in answer to prayer. 

Chr. I cannot comprehend what you mean by 
'' overruling" that which, having no sense, conscious- 
ness, or volition of its own, can neither be rule or law 
to itself. Here is a stone ; you take it up and cast 
it into the river. Is the "nature" of that stone over- 
ruled by your action ? 

Inf. Its nature is to be purely passive in the 
action. 

Chr. And if you burnt it to powder it would be 
just as passive. So is it with all material nature, 
the whole universe, under the power of God. But 
this power being, not like yours, limited, but infinite, 
extends itself over every form, phase, law, quality, 
and property equally, as over all the material itself 
of nature and the universe. And of this Infinite 
Power the volition alone is creation or annihilation. 
But equally in yours as in his hands, the mere matter 
itself has no volition of its own, and therefore cannot 
be "- overruled." 

Inf. Well, then, let us change the phraseology. 
Does the volition of God in answer to prayer so act 
upon nature as to cause it to bring about the state, 
event, or emotion prayed for ? 

Chr. According to our Christian faith, constantly. 
And we think such faith most reasonable. Is it not 
the object of every civilized man, whatever his pro- 



152 NATUKE AND THE WORLD. 

fession, trade, or art may be, to make nature and all 
its resources subservient to the use, welfare, and hap- 
piness of man ? 

Inf. Certainly. 

Chr. Christians believe nature to have been for 
this very purpose created of God. Subdue the earth, 
subdue all matter, subdue all nature, was his first 
command. Civilization is thus the handmaid of God 
over nature. When we pray to God He may answer 
us according to his pleasure, either by dispensing 
with nature, or through the medium and operation of 
nature. Nature, acting according to his volition, 
would be only fulfilling the original design of her 
creation. We in praying should be only applying 
ourselves to obtain from God the happiness for which 
we were at first designed by Him, and of which nature 
was designed to be the material medium : so far 
from being forced, " overruled," interfered with, sus- 
pended, nature would be doing the very thing and 
none other than what she was created to do. To us 
Christians, believing this view of the respective prov- 
inces of God, man, and material nature to be the 
only true and rational one, prayer is in the most per- 
fect accord with nature and its whole plan, with the 
ineradicable instincts of the soul, with the love and 
omnipotence of God. 

Inf. And you suppose that God has often thus 
made the operations of nature for good or bad in the 
land, dependent on the public prayers and worship of 
its people. 

Chr. It appears to me most reasonable that it 
should be so. Nature was made for man, man for 



THE LAWS OF NATURE AND PRAYER. , 153 

God. No further was nature intended to serve man 
than as man is the servant of God. If man with- 
draws himself from that service, God withdraws the 
blessings of nature from him, which appears to me 
most just. Thus prayer is the fulfilment, the neglect 
of prayer the violation, of the whole design and 
system of nature. Our right connection with nature 
as our material minister cannot be preserved except 
by preserving also our right connection with God as 
his spiritual ministers. The golden chain which 
binds us in love to God being riven, the iron chain 
wherewith we bind nature breaks beneath us or drags 
us to the earth captives to our slave. 

Inf. Then you do not allow, on this question, the 
accuracy of such terms as " violation of natural 
laws," " suspension of ordinary powers ?" 

Chr. No : for nature has no other law or power 
than the alone will of God ; and it appears to me a 
self-evident absurdity to think of nature in any other 
light than of being dependent, from moment to 
moment, for its very existence, much more for its 
properties and qualities, on God. Infidelity concedes 
that the First Cause — if it be aught above brute 
matter — must be able at least to do what millions of 
its creatures do, " hear" and grant prayer. It must 
grant them either through the medium and agency 
of nature, or not. If it be through the agency, con- 
trol, and direction of natural means, nature is only 
made to work out the original design of her Creator. 
If prayer be granted, but not through nature, then 
you must admit the principle, also, of the whole 
supernatural system of Christianity. 

7'"' 



154: THE LAWS OF NATURE AND PRAYER. 

Inf. You, if I understand aright, maintain both. 

Chr. Yes. I hold that the Supreme Being grants 
us the object of our prayers, according to his pleas- 
sure, by either natural, preternatural, or supernat- 
ural means. Prayer, being the law of the soul, brings 
both us back to our original position towards God, 
and nature to her original position towards us. The 
physical happiness and exaltation of a nation appear 
thus to me indissolubly connected with its moral or 
immoral, its religious or irreligious, character. And 
I contend that all the facts of history support this 
view. I am not speaking of prayer, be it observed, 
as a thing separate from, but as a co-operant of 
duty. The cholera, for instance, menaces us with a 
visitation. Certain sanitary duties must be under- 
taken and discharged. But to proceed to discharge 
and rely upon them, without any acknowledgment of 
that Supreme Being by whose will alone means are 
means, and duties duties, seems to me the acme of 
unreasoning folly. It would be great folly to pray 
only, leaving the duties undischarged ; but it is 
greater folly to go to work as if the means were 
themselves God — absolutely and infallibly eflfective 
of success, by some innate potency in themselves 
independent of God. It would be great folly, again, 
when God has already placed the means of removing 
evil in our power, to have recourse, time after time, 
to prayer against the recurrence of that very evil, 
the means of removing which He has already placed 
at our disposal. The object of such prayer would, in 
such cases, have been already gi*anted~and that 
through the agency of natural means in our own 



THE LAWS OF NATURE AND PRAYER. 155 

hands. Nature, in these and similar instances which 
abound in history, is the talent which God has al- 
ready given into our hands, but which those very 
hands wilfully and slothfuUy bury in the ground — 
then immediately after are stretched out again to 
heaven, to ask for more talent, which, if granted, 
would in such spirit meet the same fate. I am not 
speaking of prayer thus abused into a substitute for 
work, duty, or knowledge. What I affirm is, that 
these works or duties have no virtue, or power of 
success in them, beyond so far as it is the pleasure 
of God to attach it to them. And that if the ac- 
knowledgment, by prayer and public worship, of 
this truth be withdrawn by a nation, God forthwith, 
in innumerable instances, withdraws all virtue from 
the means. They cease to be means, because we 
have ceased from Him by whose pleasure alone they 
are means. 

Inf. God thus regulates nature towards man, as 
man regulates himself towards Him. 

Chr. On a national scale, yes. For nations, as 
such, cannot be judged in the next world; they must 
be, therefore, and always are, judged in this world. 
The individuals, on the contrary, of which nations 
are composed, are not judged in this world ; their 
judgment takes place in the next. On the good 
and evil individuallv, God causes the same sun to 
shine, and the same blessings of nature to flow in 
this world. On the good and evil collectively, or as 
States, He acts in this world, either in their national 
capacity, surrounding and endowing them with na- 
tional blessings, or uprooting them as a nation, and 



156 THE LAWS OF NATURE AND PRAYER. 

making their land "perpetual desolation." Thus 
the judgment of God on the Jews, as a nation, lies 
upon them in this world. His judgment upon them 
individually, for salvation or perdition, does not lie 
upon them in this world, but is reserved for Jesus 
Christ in the next. Similarly with us. God deals, 
and will deal, with Britain as a nation in this world, 
accordingly as, in her national collectiveness, she reg- 
ulates her life and conduct towards Him ; but Britons, 
individually, will be judged hereafter, not now. 

Inf. In this view you render it impossible for an 
Infidel to be a good subject or citizen. For a "na- 
tion" being composed, as you observe, of individu- 
als, the national prosperity must depend on the right 
observance, by each individual, of his religious obli- 
gations towards God. 

Chr. Certainly : for which reason there lies a re- 
sponsibility on every individual in the nation to see 
that the nation or state, of which he is a subject, 
does discharge, as a state or a nation, its duties to- 
wards God. I consider thus an Infidel Englishman, 
who neither has conscience himself, nor cares that 
the State should have conscience, towards God, to be 
the worst possible enemy to the temporal prosperity 
and welfare of England. He cannot, it is true, bring 
down a spiritual judgment on one soul individually, 
but he does all he can to bring down temporal judg- 
ment on England nationally — for as a nation God 
deals with her now, in time, not in eternity. I regard, 
therefore, the man who neglects the rehgious ordi- 
nances of common prayer and public worship, as not 
only a pernicious member of society in the abstract, 



THE LAWS OF NATURE AND PRATER. 157 

but to the extent of his individual influence and 
power a positiv^e enemy and cause of adversity to 
his own country and countrymen. In his degree 
and sphere he sets an example which would, if uni- 
versally followed, produce — and that by processes 
perfectly natural — dissolution, ignominy, and ruin on 
the land and its people. 

Inf. You must cod cede that such an entire subor- 
dination of nature to spiritual ends is not to be easily 
believed. 

Chr. No : I cannot concede it — on the contrary, 
my reason cannot conceive why nature should have 
been created at all, or why her existence should be 
continued for a day, except for the sake, and in 
subservience to spiritual and sensitive Intelligences. 
The universe of Material I^ature has no consciousness 
of its own existence, has it ? 

Inf. No. 

Chr. Nor of any properties, motions, or realities 
in itself or its elements ? 

Inf. Certainly not. 

Chr. It is clear, then, it was not created for itself. 
The idea, indeed, that matter was systematized, and 
put into its present forms and order, merely to roll, 
and roll, and roll by gravitation and repulsion in one 
eternal unconscious monotony of time and motion, 
carries its own refutation with it. We may as well 
imagine the rock, the grass, or the river to have been 
created for the sake of their own material unconscious 
selves. That a thing which cannot feel should be 
created for its own sake, infers, to my mind, strong 
absurdity. Yet Infidels talk and write as if there 



.158 THE LAWS OF NATURE AND PRAYER. 

reallj was some vast consciousness of order and 
sense of regularity in these inert masses themselves : 
as if the sun, the earth, the atmosphere were 
animated by a living principle of conscience, which 
rendered the slightest deviation from their course of 
duty not for a moment to be tolerated as a possi- 
bility in nature. And they have invented, and per- 
sist in using, a certain set of words and phrases, 
intended to impress the mind with a belief that 
man — spiritual, intelligent, immortal man — is a mere 
slave and dependent on what they call the " laws " 
of this dead stuff : that he is made for it, not it for 
him : and that to ascertain what these " laws " are, 
is the highest knowledge of which he is capable. I, 
for my part, hold that if only one single soul, capa- 
ble of that which all material nature is not capable 
of — enjoying and suffering — existed in the world, 
the continuance, the wreck, or reconstruction of all 
nature would, in right season, depend on how far it 
did or did not subscribe and contribute to the neces- 
sities or desires of that one soul. What is all this 
senseless nature, that it should be put into compari- 
son or competition with the nature of even one sensi- 
tive being ? If a dog were the only sensitive being 
in the world, it would be most rational that the non- 
sensitive world should have been so ordered as to be 
in all things conducive to his being and well-being. 
Now this nature was created to be more entirely 
the plastic slave of man as inert matter, than the 
dog or any other creature, to be his animal slave — 
yet Infidelity magnifies it, and certain properties in 
it termed its laws, — the laws of a lump of earth, or a 



FOLLY OF MATKRIALISM. 159 

current of wind, or a blaze of lire ! — into an imniii- 
table sovereignty over the destinies of sense, intelli- 
gence, and soul. 

Inf. Man, however, cannot alter these ''laws" or 
properties, tendencies, and effects of the material 
universe. 

Chr. No : for the universe, with its matter and 
properties, is not his, but God's. But he can, as you 
know, direct and control them to an almost indefinite 
extent ; but what he does and is doing more and 
more every day as he progresses in peace, science, 
and civilization — does for his own comfort, for pay, 
for money, for speculation, — does in steam, in fire, 
in every element from electricity to iron, — is, accord- 
ing to Infidelity, quite out of the power of God to 
do in any way for him. Man may direct the light- 
ning, but God cannot — may produce abundant har- 
vests, but God cannot : man can give or destroy life 
in tens of thousands, but God cannot 

Inf. But man does all this by and through nature. 

Chr. And cannot God ? Does man '' violate," or 
only discover and apply to his own purposes, the 
powers of nature herein? Cannot God also thus 
use nature for his purposes towards man ? On the 
very lowest supposition this power must be conceded : 
and with it again you concede the reasonableness of 
prayer by man to the God of nature. Let me ask 
you this question : Which is more dear to you, your 
children or the furniture of your house ? Is the fur- 
niture for the family, or the family for the furniture? 
But all the arguments of Infidelity about nature and 
man proceed on the gross assumption that the sense- 



160 FOLLY OF MATERIALISM. 

less furniture of the senseless house is something 
both more powerful in itself, and more precious in 
the sight of God, than the happiness and souls of his 
own immortal children. For the sake of your chil- 
dren you would alter this and that in your house at 
your pleasure : in doing so, you would never dream 
that you were " violating " any immutable series of 
causes and effects in your furniture — nor w^ould you 
be ; you would only be treating matter as matter, as 
God made it to be treated — as He Himself, by his 
word or will, treats all the universe of matter and its 
properties. The good of the least of your little chil- 
dren would be sufficient to induce you to change the 
whole material arrangement of your nursery, your 
garden, your grounds. But God, exclaims your Infi- 
delity, cannot thus consult the good or the happiness 
of his children, though they draw near to Him with 
full and earnest hearts on bended knees ; and why 
not? Because something or other in the senseless 
inert matter of the universe — the furniture of his 
house — prevents Him from doing for his children 
what the same matter cannot prevent any mortal 
father in his own house from doing for his children. 
My judgment revolts from such '^ intellectual Infi- 
delity," as no sooner expressed than self-condemned. 
One human being is more dear to God tJian all the 
universe of unconscious material nature; the prayer 
of even one such is never unheard; whether gra- 
ciously granted, or graciously and in mercy denied, 
or how granted, naturally or supernaturally, is God's 
province, not the supplicants. The act of prayer 
itself is of all others the most truly natural and 



FOLLY OF MATERIALISM. 161 

rational in which a human being can be engaged 
towards the great First Cause and Sovereign Dis- 
poser of the Universe. Among other blessings at- 
tendant on it, it disperses from the soul all the im- 
pious nonsense and folly connected with such systems 
of material fatalism as we have been discussing. , 

Inf. Well, then, I now revert to prophecy again ; 
and it appears to me that on these very principles 
which you enunciate, Prophecy and Fatalism are 
identical. Unless there be a predestined order of 
events, or a system of fatalities, how can there be 
prophecy, which is in fact the prediction of that 
which is '' fated" to happen ? How can you separate 
one from the other ? 

Chr. We have already, I think, rejected all fatality 
or necessity as proceeding from matter. Now what 
is the origin of the expression ''fate ?" '' Quod fatur 
Deus." ''That which God speaks." The "Fata," 
therefore, according to the sense of the old world, 
were nothing else than what it pleased God to speak 
— the " Words" of God. Infidelity in the existence 
of God corrupted that sense, and absurdly connected 
" Fate" or " the Word" with material nature, which 
is totally incapable of one " word" or sensible sound. 
Now if we bring back " Fate" to its original accepta- 
tion of " the Word of God," then we should agree that 
whatever this Word or Fate of God has spoken or 
decreed, must happen. This is the only " fate" Chris- 
tianity acknowledges, and it is you see the only 
" fate" also of which through language we can form 
any positive idea. To us, through Christ, the word 
of God is the only fate ; now how came the heathen 



162 FOLLY OF MATERIALISM. 

world to call the power thus indicated by the same 
name as we do "the Word?" They either reasoned 
such power up to this source themselves, or it is the 
definition of such power which the great community 
of the human heart and mind itself suggests, or all 
heathenism whatever, — being the corruption of that 
faith which " was from the beginning," — retained of 
necessity in ordinances, beliefs, names, more or less of 
the truths of that faith, — among others, that that 
power which causes all things to come to pass is the 
" Fate or Word of God." Any one of these supposi- 
tions condemns the irrationality of Infidelity, and 
confirms the verity of Christianity. The simple ex- 
pression ''Fate," "the Word," implies a power of 
which material nature is not capable. Thus the terms 
themselves which Infidelity would pervert to its own 
purposes prove, on examination, destructive to its 
very foundations. It desires to aggrandize material 
nature under the aspect of " Fate," but " Fate" when 
applied to spurns such connection, and proclaims 
itself the power and expression of something quite 
distinct from, and supreme over matter. 

Inf. I understand then your position with ref- 
erence to prophecy to be this, — the Word itself is 
the cause why the things it predicts come to pass. 

Chr. Yes. 

Inf. The word of prophecy being once gone forth, 
all things thenceforth and for that reason — because it 
is "the Word" — are made by the living Word Him- 
self, Jesus Christ, so to work together as to fulfil 
and verify it. 

Chr. Such is my view. The Word is the cause of 



THE TJFf-:-WORD THE POWER OF GOD. 163 

the events, the power by which such avents are 
caused ; not any " fatality" in events the cause of 
the Word itself, or of the Word being revealed. 

Inf. Let us see. Christ suflFered death by Cruci- 
fixion. Was He to be by any " fatality" in events, 
crucified, and the word of prophecy therefore given ; 
or " the Word" once gone forth that Crucifixion was 
to be the mode of his death, therefore He was cruci- 
fied ? You hold the latter view ? 

Chr. I do. 

Inf. Then you do hold that whatever this "Word" 
has gone forth upon is what I mean by " Fate" — an 
event which must come to pass — only with you it is 
God, and proceeds from God only : the expression 
itself implying a power of which physical or material 
nature is itself entirely incapable. Tou make " Fate" 
solely that will of God which by its own Spirit ex- 
presses, and by its own power fulfils itself ; the ex- 
pression or prophecy and the verification being thus 
of necessity, as being both operated by one God, in 
perfect accordance with each other. 

Chr. Exactly so. 

Inf. I admit the consistency of this view, but see! 
it holds within it still a certain species of fatalism. 

Chr. Provided you admit " Fate" to be nothing 
else than the will of God in operation, I do not see 
how it can be otherwise. 

Inf. True. As thus — what the Word of God has 
once expressed, God himself has no power to change ; 
the Word of God binds God Himself to its fulfilment. 

Chr. Admitted ; the Word of God is, I repeat, the 
only " must be" we Christians hold : beyond or ex- 



164 THE LIFE- WORD THE POWER OF GOD. 

traneous to it we repudiate all and every " must be" 
with God or in creation. 

Inf. What ! the omnipotence of God is bound to 
his Word ! 

Chr. Yes, is one with his Word. And so far as all 
things created are concerned, his Word is not only the 
expression but the co-instantaneous action of his 
omnipotence. " Let there be light," that was " the 
word :" with the word there was light ; that was om- 
nipotence, but the word and the omnipotence being 
one went forth as one. " I will, be thou whole ;" 
that was the word, with the word the effect is co- 
instantaneous ; wholeness is created. " This is my 
body ; this is my blood ;" that is the word: the Word, 
being omnipotence, effects itself: the bread co-in- 
stantaneously with the Word becomes, by the omnip- 
otence of the Word, that which the Word expresses 
it to be; Christ is thus, as the Scriptures declare 
Him to be, both the Word and — as being the Word 
— the Power also of God. 

Inf. But Christianity herein methinks assumes the 
province of philosophy, and very profound philoso- 
phy too. 

Chr. Certainly, as we believe, the only true phi- 
losophy. Philosophy, as you are well aware, is not 
wisdom, but the love and appreciation of wisdom ; to 
us Jesus Christ, the Word and the Power, is also the 
Wisdom of God. To love and appreciate Him is, as 
St. Paul expresses it, " wisdom in the highest," the 
best and purest philosophy of which the human in- 
tellect is capable. Now that the action of the power 
of God is simultaneous with his word is, I think, 



THE LIFE- WORD THE POWER OF GOD. 165 

clear to reason. How did God at first, for instance, 
create matter ? It was not, as we may say, with 
hands. 

Inf. Of course not. 

Chr. Nor yet by, or with, material agencies, for 
He could not act with matter, when as yet there was 
no matter to act with. 

Inf. Equally plain. 

Chr. We are driven back upon something then 
entirely in God Himself as the first cause of matter. 
Whatever it be, its coming forth from God, its first 
action, could only take place by the will of God 
Himself. That which did thus come forth of God, 
very God of very God, being both the will and power 
of God to create all things out of nothing, Chris- 
tianity terms " the Word " or 'O Aoyo^ of God, which 
Word, Incarnate, is Jesus Christ. By this " Word " 
alone, ''whose goings forth," as Micah states, ''are 
from everlasting" — were matter, the universe, all 
things whatever created. 

Inf. But is this an inference from Scripture, or 
plain Scripture itself? 

Chr. Plain Scripture itself — plainer than the in- 
ference — but the expressions of Scripture are become 
so familiarized, that to draw attention to the plain 
meaning and sense of Scripture we are often obliged 
to put their sense before people as nearly as we can 
in other terms. The philosophy, as you call it, which 
alone to my mind solves the origin of creation is ex- 
pressed in the plainest possible terms by St. John. 
" In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was 
with God, and the Word was God. The same was in 



166 THE LIFE-WOKD THE POWEK OF GOD. 

the beginning with God. All things were made by 
him ; and without him was nothing made that was 
made. And the Word was made flesh." ^ Now 
unless matter made itself, this statement of its 
origin and creation is, I will venture to affirm, the 
only one approving itself to right reason which has 
ever been presented to the world. God, not creating 
by material hands of his own, nor by material 
agencies, matter not yet existing, it follows that 
creation must have been eff*ected by the '' Word " of 
God : it equally follows that the Word itself being 
thus the creative power, creation itself must of 
necessity be simultaneous with the Word. ]^ow our 
Christian faith is that Jesus Christ is this incarnate 
Word of God ; and such faith we thus confess in the 
Nicene Creed, " I believe in one Lord Jesus Christ, 
the only-Begotten Son of God, Begotten of his 
Father before all worlds, God of God, Light of Light, 
Yery God of very God, Begotten not made — By 
whom all things were made." 

Inf. I well know with what a high hand the 
Church has always carried the absolute divinity of 
its Founder, on which point I shall presently deliver 
my sentiments. I confess, however, that there is 
much greater depth as well as sublimity in what I will 
persist in terming the " philosophy " of Christianity 
and the Scriptures, than I was at all prepared to 
combat. But how does the fact of Christ being the 
Power as well as Word of God bear on our present 
subject of prophecy ? 

Chr. The Word being also the power of God is the 

* John i. 



THE LIFE-WORD THE POWER OF GOD. 167 

cause in all things, prophecy included, of its own ful- 
filment. The Scripture is the written expression of 
the Life- Word, Jesus Christ. Every prophecy thus 
written, being thus part of the Word itself which is 
God, carries with it its own creative power. The 
subject of it must under the power of the Word as 
necessarily come into existence, as under the power 
of the same Word matter itself, the light, the sun, the 
earth, man came out of the dust or out of nothing into 
existence. Every thing therefore on which this Word 
has gone forth must come to pass ; for to this Word, 
the power of God, both being one, is indissolubly 
bound. All other things whatever on which the Word 
has not gone forth remain as from the beginning at 
the absolute disposal of God to change, modify, or 
annihilate at his pleasure. The Scriptures thus con- 
tain to us the revelations of those things on which 
the 'O Aoyo^ of God has gone forth. These cannot be 
in one iota changed by God Himself till " all be ful- 
filled," for, as St. Paul expresses it, it is impossible for 
God to deny Himself; and this Himself the 'O Aoyog 
is. The will of God cannot be contrary to itself, nor 
to the expression of itself as the " Word." So far, 
therefore, as the Word has spoken, there is 'Tate:" 
the Scriptures are the revelations of this "Fate." 
As out of "Christ" there is no "fate," or word of 
God, so out of the Scriptures can there exist no reve- 
lation or science of fate whatever. For on all things 
else the "fate" or word of God has not, as far as we 
know, gone forth ; on these things it has. And these 
therefore are those things which, out of this world 
and the next, out of time and eternity, must be veri- 



168 CHRIST THE ONLY FATE OF MAN. 

fled by the truth, and substantiated by the omnipo- 
tence of God. And in them all, and their fulfilment, 
there is no element of time to Christ as the 'O Aoyo^ : 
for time, as we said, is no element of God ; but there 
is the element of time in them to the man Jesus who 
by the incarnation of the 'O Aoyog became the Christ 
or the God anointed : to us also who are in our 
bodies the extension of Jesus, as the incarnation 
of the 'O Koyoq, and in our sanctified souls of the 'O 
Aoyof in Jesus, time is an element. With reference 
to ourselves, therefore, we use the terms " predesti- 
nation," '' foretold," "prophecy," and such like : with 
reference to God we reject them as inapplicable to a 
Being in whom neither creation, nor matter, nor any 
form, property, or quality of matter has, or can have, 
part or inherency. 

Inf. This statement, which makes Jesus Christ 
the only " fate," " destiny," or " necessity" to man, 
utterly explodes the idea of any inherent power in 
material nature to produce events in future ; it re- 
moves man, as a spiritual being, entirely beyond the 
powers or chances of any thing below God. 

Chr. It does so. And moreover, while Infidelity 
cannot give us the remotest idea of what it means 
by its "fate," or its "predestined order of causes," 
or what such order, w^ith reference to man as an 
intelligent and spiritual being, will be in ten or 
twenty years, Christianity places the w^ritten Book 
of true "fate" to the very moment, and beyond it, 
of the consummation of this present order of nature 
in the hands of every believer. And in so doing, 
enables him to place himself at once by faith in 



CHKIST~THE ONLY FATE OF NATURE. 169 

entire harmony of life and soul with the purposes of 
God : such " Fate" becomes to him merely the " or- 
der" of his own salvation, and of the restoration of 
all things in Christ : with such order he rejoicingly 
works : by obeying Him from whom it proceeds he 
commands futurity itself: for knowing what such 
futurity will be " by the Word," " by the Word" 
also which calls, incorporates, and engraces him with 
itself, he is already exalted above all its evil, and 
spiritualized for all its good. Christ, the Christian's 
" Fate," revealed to him, becomes his salvation : if in 
the " order of events" issuing from Christ the Word, 
there is in futurity such a " Fate" as hell, he, by 
becoming one with Christ, forever escapes it: if 
such a " Fate" as Heaven, he forever gains it. The 
revelation, then, of Christ, places, in one sense, every 
man's "Fate" in his own power. Every man is 
called to be one with Him by the Word : every man 
by such Word, effective of itself, is made capable of 
coming and of being made one with Christ : every 
man has it put into his own power to be, if he please, 
in Christ, the Word, the will, and the power of God, as 
to himself — the master of his own fate, and the arbi- 
ter of his soul's destinies. Here the reason of reve- 
lation and of prophecy, the truth of God's ever-present 
power upon man, and yet the freedom of man's will 
by the same power of God, in the matter of his own 
salvation and perdition, are practically in every man, 
in every hour of every day, reconciled and combined. 
Inf. I deduce from this statement that you believe 
the whole world to be moving at this moment by the 
word of prophecy. 



170 CHRIST THE ONLY FATE OF NATUKE. 

Chr. By every word that has proceeded out of the 
mouth of God. 

Inf. And you admit no other '^ Fate," or " fatal- 
ism?" 

Chr. IvTone. 

Inf. l^or any, as of necessity, series of causes and 
effects, as existing out of the Word. 

Chr. How is it possible if, as we said, by the 
Word only things are created and do subsist, any 
one cause or eff'ect, let alone any series, should, " ex- 
cept by the Word," come into existence at all? 

Inf. And this Word, which called present Nature 
into existence, having also declared that it shall cease 
to exist, its destruction is as certain as its existence 
— both being bound up in the same " Word." 

Che. Yes. 

Inf. Whatever also that " Word" has gone forth 
upon, to that the whole Deity is committed — Nature 
itself being so regulated as in all things to subserve 
" the Word." Now this, I apprehend, is what we 
call " Supernaturalism," is it not ? 

Chr. As you please : I will not answer for names ; 
but Nature itself is, next to Christianity, the most 
supernatural thing I know. 

Inf. Nature supernatural ! What a paradox. 

Chr. Not at all, I conceive. Whatever owes its 
origin to something above Nature, must be super- 
natural. Nature owes its origin, not to itself, but to 
something prior to and greater than itself: it is 
therefore itself one vast confederation of the evi- 
dences of supernaturalism. Not a single opera- 
tion is there in Nature which was not originally 



TETE LIFE- WORD THE CREATIVE POWER. 171 

called into action by a power above and preceding 
Nature. The difference is that Nature is the tran- 
sient, Christianity the permanent, form of super- 
naturalism. Nature as it is will dissolve in the 
Church of God as it will be — God, who is above the 
Church, and above all Nature now, will still be for- 
ever above the two in one then. Nature thus, as it 
began in the ''going forth," so it will end in the 
"Word" of God fulfilled. 

Inf. One of Newman's most formidable objections 
hinges, it appears to me, upon the epithet the " Word 
of God." Here is his statement:^ 

" One of the most decisive testimonies to the Old 
Testament which the New contains is in John x. 35, 
where I hardly know how to allow myself to charac- 
terize the reasoning; the case stands thus. The 
82d Psalm rebukes unjust governors, and at length 
says to them, ' I have said. Ye are gods ; and all of 
you are children of the Most High. But ye shall die 
like men, and fall like one of the princes.' In other 
words, ' Though we are apt to think of rulers as if 
they were superhuman, yet they shall meet the lot 
of common men.' Well : how is this applied in 
John? Jesus has been accused of blasphemy for 
saying that ' He and his Father are one.' And in 
reply He quotes the verse, 'I have said, Ye are 
gods,' as his sufficient justification for calling Him- 
self the Son of God: 'for the Scriptures cannot be 
broken.' I dreaded to precipitate myself into shock- 
ing unbelief if I followed out the thoughts that 
this suggested." ^ 

1 Phases of Faith, p. 76. 2 i^id. p. 61. 



172 THE LIFE- WORD THE CREATIVE POWER. 

Thus far JSTewman. I understand him to imply 
that Christ, being accused of blasphemy for calling 
Himself in a sole peculiar sense " One with God," 
prevaricated from his real meaning by quoting a 
verse from Scripture, in which He knew the title 
" God " to be applied in quite a different sense to 
princes and rulers. He used the term '' One with 
God " at first in one sense — meaning that He Him- 
self was very God : and so the Jews understood him, 
and charging Him at once with blasphemy in thus 
making ''Himself God," took up stones to stone 
Him to death — Whereupon Christ, shrinking from 
this death by lapidation, defends the term He had 
used by quoting to them a verse in their own Scrip- 
tures in which it occurs — but occurs in quite another 
sense to that in which He had applied it to himself. 
If this view be correct, was not Christ here guilty of 
prevarication ? 

Chr. The view is altogether erroneous, and New- 
man here, as in other portions of his writings, by no 
means shows that knowledge of Scripture for which 
he has hitherto received credit. Let us examine the 
narrative of the facts themselves in St. John. Jesus 
Christ, at the Feast of the Dedication, was walking 
in Solomon's Porch in the Temple at Jerusalem. 
The Jews surround and accost Him, " How long dost 
thou make us to doubt? If thou be the Christ, tell 
us plainly." Jesus does tell them plainly, ''I and 
my Father are one." They menace Him with instant 
death for blasphemy, " because He, being man, made 
Himself equal with God." Jesus, referring them to 
their own Scriptures in which God Himself had called 



THE LIFE-WORD THE CREATIVE POWER. 173 

those to whom ''the Word of God" came — God's 
" children of the Most High," demands if they dare 
say of Him, "the Living Word of God Himself thus 
come," sent and sanctified by the Father, a blas- 
phemer, because He calls Himself the Son of God? 
And He immediately, with greater emphasis and 
authority, repeats the "blasphemy" — "Know and 
believe that the Father is in me and I in Him." 
Whereupon the Jews again attempted to seize Him, 
" but He escaped out of their hands." 

The question asked was, "Art thou the Christ?" 
Jesus tells them plainly, in the Scriptures, He is : 
they charge Him with blasphemy; He answers 
" God calls those to whom the Christ — the Word — is 
sent, children of God." Christ Himself, therefore, the 
sending of whom " makes them the children of God," 
must be God ; for how could they become the chil- 
dren of God, if the "sent" whom they received 
was not Himself God, one with the Father? I am 
that Christ — that " sent" of the Father — the Messiah 
— one therefore with the Father: the Father is in 
me, and I in Him. 

I see nothing here but the straightest action, the 
highest courage, the most unanswerable argument. 
Christians are now the children of God ; what makes 
them such? The Christ — the Word sent. He who 
being received makes us by such reception of Him- 
self children of God, must needs Himself be God. 
If He is not, then are not we the children of God, 
and the Scriptures, which calls us such in Him, are 
" broken" — which to the Jew of old, and to us now, 
is simply an impossibility, and Christ was speaking 



174 THE LIFE-WORD THE CREATIVE POWER. 

to the Jews in the very same language and to the 
same purpose as He now speaks with to ns. 

Inf. I^ewman certainly does not seem to have 
made himself master of his data in this case. The 
reasoning and conduct of Christ herein appear 
straightforwardness and intrepidity themselves. 

Chr. l^ewman has abandoned Orthodoxy. He 
has probably ceased to see Christ in the Scriptures 
at all : he could see nothing of Christ, perha23S5 in 
the Psalm itself.-^ " Arise, O God, judge the earth : 
for thou shalt inherit all nations." Nor would he 
admit that when we are made members of Christ, 
we of necessity become children of God, because 
Christ, of whom we are part, is God. To us, however, 
in the Church, the Psalm, its quotation by Christ, 
and the irrefragable proof it supplies to us of His 
Godhead, are so in unison with the whole doctrine of 
the Church, and its interpretation of the Scriptures, 
that we never could have made ITewman's construc- 
tion out of it, or read the narrative in St. John as he 
seems to have done. 

Inf. I advance to another very serious charge 
against the morality of your Scriptures. In page 91 
of "" Phases of Faith" Newman writes, '' Hosea was 
divinely ordered to go and unite himself to an im- 
pure woman. Could I possibly think that God 
ordered me to do so if I heard a voice in the air com- 
manding it ? Should I not rather disbelieve my hear- 
ing than disown my moral perceptions ? It must be 
morally right to believe moral rather than sensible 
perceptions. No outward impressions on the eye or 

J Ps. Ixxxii. 



THE LIFE- WORD THE CREATIVE POWER. 175 

ear can be so valid an assurance to me of God's will 
as my inward judgment. 

Chr. Surely your Infidel has here turned into a 
downright Roman Catholic, has he not? 

Inf. How so ? 

Chr. Is not the principle which he here lays down 
— that the senses are no judges in the things of the 
soul — the very principle in his brother's religion on 
which the whole system of Transubstantiation is 
founded ? Read it thus — " Should I not rather dis- 
believe my hearing than disown my spiritual percep- 
tions ? It must be spiritually right to believe spirit- 
ual rather than sensible perceptions. 'No outward 
impression on the eye or ear, can be so valid an assu- 
rance to me of God's will as my spiritual judgment." 
His brother would add, " that such spiritual judgment 
— such spiritual perception was borne out and sanc- 
tioned by the express letter of Scripture, 'This is my 
body — this is my blood.'" But this religion, which 
thus sacrifices the senses to internal intuitions, 
moral or spiritual, is that very faith of which Francis 
Newman has thus expressed himself:- ''For the 
peculiarities of Romanism I feel nothing, and I can 
pretend nothing but contempt, hatred, disgust, and 
horror — a system of falsehood, fraud, unscrupulous 
and unrelenting ambition."^ Yet he here adopts as 
his own, the strongest, perhaps, of all the "pecu- 
liarities" of Romanism. " No outward impression 
on the senses can be so valid an assurance to us of 
God's will, as something inward — be that something 
faith, spiritual or moral perception, or whatever we 

I "Phases of Faith," p. 72. 



176 SPIRITUAL STATE OF THE JEWS. 

may choose to term it, and to believe this ' inward 
judgment,' rather than sensible perceptions must be 
right." Newman, in his zeal against an imaginary 
instance of false morality in the Scriptures, not only 
precipitates himself into the very system of fraud and 
falsehood for which he expresses — and I doubt not 
very sincerely — such disgust and horror, but abso- 
lutely commits his whole "inward judgment" to the 
principle on which such system is constructed. But 
this, however, is only one of the many acts of intel- 
lectual suicide constantly perpetrated by Infidelity. 
Let us proceed to examine this new charge which 
will, I dare say, evaporate as the previous ones into 
thin air, at the touch of the spear of scrutiny. The 
passage to which I^ewman alludes is not, I presume, 
that in the first chapter of Hosea — for that commands 
marriage — but that in the third chapter. 

"Then said the Lord unto me. Go yet, love a wom- 
an beloved of her friend, yet an adulteress, accord- 
ing to the love of the Lord toward the children of 
Israel, who look to other gods, and love flagons of 
wine. SoT bought her to me for fifteen pieces of 
silver, and for an homer of barley, and an half homer 
of barley. And I said imto her, thou shalt abide 
for me many days : thou shalt not play the harlot, 
and thou shalt not be for another man : so will I 
also be for thee. For the children of Israel shall 
abide many days without a king, and without a 
prince, and without a sacrifice, and without an image, 
and without an ephod, and without teraphim. Af- 
terwards shall the children of Israel return and seek 
the Lord their God, and David their king, and shall 



SPIRITUAL STATE OF THE JEWS. 1Y7 

fear the Lord and his goodness in the latter days."^ 
Not a word is there here of " a voice in the air," nor 
of '' being united to an impure woman." Hosea is 
commanded to purchase a woman beloved by " a 
friend," yet who for temporal seduction had forsaken 
her "friend," and attached herself to many lovers. 
Thus purchased on the covenant that she is hence- 
forth to give up these lovers, to abandon her evil 
courses, and to consider herself the property of her 
purchaser alone — but between the purchaser and 
her there was to be no further communication. She 
was to abide " for him," waiting for him many days. 
The typing of this prophetic action ahiiost explains 
itself — it describes the spiritual or religious state in 
which the Jews, as a people, were to remain between 
the Crucifixion of Christ and their final conversion 
in " the latter days " to Christianity. The Friend of 
whom Israel was beloved, and whom she deserted, 
was God : her many lovers were her numerous 
idolatries. Hosea represented Christ. Christ has 
purchased Israel, as He has the Christian Church, 
for Himself. But unlike His spouse, the Christian 
Church, He has not so purchased Israel as to be- 
come yet her husband. Israel is to wait "many 
days" for that union: in "the latter days" it will 
take place. Israel shall then return to her " Friend " 
the Lord their God, and to David their king. Mean- 
time as in their temporal, so in their spiritual state, 
they are to remain " a sign " among the nations — 
utterly weaned from their former idolatries, prevented 
from falling into any image-idolatries resembling the 

1 Hosea iii. 
8-- 



178 SPIRITUAL STATE OF THE JEWS. 

former, yet not Christians ; and furthermore without 
king, or prince, or sacrifice, utterly incapacitated to 
carry out or observe the ritual of their own defunct, 
because fulfilled, Leviticus. And the prophecy is 
now, and has been for centuries, most precisely 
verified. The Jews at this day have neither king, 
prince, nor sacrifice in their religion : the priesthood 
of the ephod has long since disappeared ; all distinc- 
tion between tribe and tribe, between Levi and the 
lay tribes, has long been lost ; Jerusalem continues 
" trodden down of the Gentiles ;" its Temple has passed 
away in fire and ashes, and the site is occupied by a 
Gentile mosque. Israel has been " abiding these 
many days" for some one : she herself acknowledges 
it : she has ceased to " play the harlot :" neither is 
she for any other man — any other religion than Him 
and His for whom she is " abiding." ISTeither idola- 
trous nor Christian, physically, nationally, and geo- 
graphically disabled from observing the ceremonial 
law they profess, the Jews are in this, as in other 
respects, an exception to the whole world. Newman 
is here once more very unfortunate in missing the 
point of the whole prophetic action. Had Hosea 
united himself to the woman he purchased, the act 
would have conveyed a meaning directly the reverse 
of what the purchase, without such union, was de- 
signed and admirably calculated to convey to the 
people of Israel. But now, as the prophetic drama 
declared, so has it come to pass — Israel is entirely 
redeemed from her old, and preserved from new 
idolatries ; but her Redeemer has not yet become her 
husband. When the times of the Gentiles shall have 



SPIRITUAL STATE OF THE JEWS. 179 

been fulfilled, then shall botli Jerusalem cease to be 
trodden down, Israel shall seek the Lord their God, 
and with the Gentile shall be one fold under one 
Shepherd — David their King — Christ both the root 
and branch of Jesse. 

Inf. And this too, I suppose, is one of those 
Church or orthodox expositions of prophecy to which 
Newman would demur. 

Chr. He must then demur to the broad facts of 
the religious state of the Jews at this moment ; but 
all the world, literate and illiterate, know the Jew^s 
have in these days no king, no prince, no temple, no 
sacrifice, no ephod ; they know also they do not 
worship images or teraphim of any description, and 
also that they are not of the Christian Church. All 
this is the very explanation Hosea himself, 760 years 
before the temple, and with the temple the capability 
of observing the temple ritual, was destroyed, de- 
livered of the prophetic act he had been commanded 
to perform ; the explanation is not modern, it is not 
ours, it is Hosea's own of his own act. All the Church 
does in the matter is to look round the world where- 
ever the Jews are scattered, and then declare what 
neither Church nor Infidel can help confessing to be 
the truth, that the spiritual state of the Jews in 
these latter days is emphatically that which Hosea 
in his explanation of this act predicted it should be. 
If Js^ewman insists that eighteen centuries are not 
" many days," — or that the Jews have a king and 
prince of their own, — or that they are lapsed back into 
their old image-idolatries, — the world, having all the 
modern facts of the case before their eves, and the 



180 SPIRITUAL STATE OF THE JEWS. 

very words of Hosea in their hands, can itself, with 
the greatest facility, judge between Newman and the 
Scriptures he assails, between the Church and In- 
fidelity. My reason goes with the Church and the 
Scriptures because facts go with them. I cannot 
possibly deny that such and such a prophecy is in 
Hosea : nor that he himself explained it in the 
plainest words ; nor that the most accurate descrip- 
tion of the present religious state of the Jews to 
whom it by name refers, is conveyed by the very 
words so written in Hosea. The question here is one 
quite as much of our senses as of intellect. The 
evidence of my senses convinces me of certain facts ; 
the evidence of my eyesight convinces me of certain 
words in Scripture ; it requires only common honesty 
to decide on the agreement or non-agreement of the 
words with the facts. The facts do agree to a tittle 
with the words : I conclude the Scriptures must be 
inspired, and mj intellect sanctions the conclusion as 
the only rational one right reason can adopt. 

Inf. I will pass rapidly over the remaining objec- 
tions. In p. 93, '• Phases of Faith," the old argument on 
the extermination of the Canaanites is thus restated 
by Newman. " Besides all this the command of 
slaughter to the Jew is not directed against the seven 
nations of Canaan only as modern theologians often 
erroneously assert. It is a universal permission of 
avaricious massacre and subjugation of ' the cities 
which are very far off from thee, which are not of 
the cities of these nations.' "^ 

Ohr. This is a misstatement of Newman's, as a 

1 Deut. XX. 15. 



EXTIRPATION OF THE CANAANITES. 181 

reference to Deuteronomy xx. 15 will immediately 
demonstrate. 

"When thou comest nigh unto a city to fight 
against it, then proclaim peace unto it. And it shall 
be, if it make thee answer of peace, and open unto 
thee, then it shall be, that all the people that is found 
therein shall be tributaries unto thee, and they shall 
serve thee. And if it will make no peace with thee, 
but will make war against thee, then thou shalt be- 
siege it : and when the Lord thy God hath delivered 
it into thy hands, thou shalt smite every male there- 
of with tlie edge of the sword : but the women, and 
the little ones, and the cattle, and all that is in the 
city, even all the sj)oil thereof, shalt thou take unto 
thyself; and thou shalt eat the spoil of thine ene- 
mies, which the Lord thy God hath given thee. Thus 
shalt thou do unto all the cities which are very far 
off from thee, which are not of the cities of these 
nations. But of the cities of these people, which the 
Lord thy God doth give thee for an inheritance, thou 
shalt save alive nothing that breatheth: but thou 
shalt utterly destroy them, the Hittites, and the 
Amorites, and Canaanites, and the Perizzites, the 
Hivites, and the Jebusites ; as the Lord thy God 
hath commanded thee : that they teach you not to 
do after all their abominations whicli they have done 
unto their gods ; so should ye sin against the Lord 
your God." 

Inf. I intend presently to discuss whether such a 
command as this could possibly emanate from a just 
and merciful God. 

Chk. Very well ; but now let us confine ourselves 



182 EXTIRPATION OF THE CANAANITES. 

to one point at a time, l^ewman's ignorance of the 
letter of the Scri}3tiires is here very striking. A 
most marked distinction is drawn between the cities 
of the seven nations, or of the inheritance enumerated 
and specified with scrupulous exactitude here and 
elsewhere to the people of Israel, and the cities of the 
nations afar oif : the latter are in every case to receive 
a formal overture of peace. If accepted, they are to 
become tributaries ; if rejected, yet under no circum- 
stances are the women or the little ones to be put to 
the sword, — a course which was mercy itself com- 
pared to the usual practices of oriental conquerors 
in those times. But of the cities of the seven na- 
tions, " thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth, 
thou shalt utterly destroy them." Is not the distinc- 
tion as marked as language can impress it ? 

Inf. An error clearlj^ of JS^ewman's in the quota- 
tion of Scriptures. 

Ohr. Newman, in his " Phases of Faith," comes 
before the public assigning certain reasons for his 
apostacy from Christianity. An inquiry into these 
reasons leads to the detection that some of them — 
and these not the least depended upon by the writer 
for his justification in so very serious a proceeding — 
are based upon palpable misquotations or miscon- 
ceptions of the Scriptures which he impugns. In 
another man we should pronounce it gross ignorance 
of his subject ; what shall we say it is in him? His 
apostacy, on the face of it, is partly the result of, to 
say the least, inaccurate consultation, imperfect 
knowledge of the Book whose authority he would 
overthrow. 



THE SENSES AND INSIGHT. 183 

Inf. Every one is liable to such mistakes. 

Che. Every one is ; but a scholar and an able contro- 
versialist like Newman, writing expressly against the 
Scriptures, should not, though liable, be guilty of such 
mistakes about the Scriptures. He asserts a certain 
command as contained in the Scriptures to be uni- 
versal ; reference instantly shows it not to be universal, 
but to be most carefully and jealously limited — but 
meantime nine in ten of his readers do not refer to 
the Scriptures, but take N^ewman's representation of 
them on trust, and just in proportion as they do this 
is their faith in the Scriptures shaken. Liability is 
surely, in so grave a cause, a poor excuse for the com- 
mission of error. 

Inf. You do not impute it as wilful. 

Chr. No ; but when discovered it recoils most 
damagingly on the whole reasoning process by which 
such apostacy was brought about. 

Inf. Well, here is another positive assertion of his 
on another subject, — ''As Christianity in its origin 
was preached to the poor, so it was to the inward 
senses that its first preachers appealed as the supreme 
arbiters in the whole religious question."^ 

Chr. Another reckless proposition. Christ was 
the author and first preacher of Christianity: let us 
refer to St. Matthew xi. 1-5. 

" It came to pass when Jesus had made an end of 
commanding his twelve disciples, he departed thence 
to teach and to preach in their cities. Now when 
John had heard in the prison the works of Christ, 

» Phases of Faith, p. 95. 



184 THE SENSES AND INSIGHT. 

he sent two of liis disciples, and said unto Him, Art 
tliou He that should come, or do we look for another? 
Jesus answered and said, Go and show John again 
those things which ye do hear and see. The blind 
receive their sight, and the lame walk, the lepers 
are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised 
lip, and the poor have the Gospel preached to them." 
Is this appeal of " works," of what persons see and 
hear, to the inward or to the outward senses ? 

Inf. Christ, it is evident, here makes the bodily 
senses of the whole multitude the arbiters of the 
reality of His miracles. But what did the Apostles 
subsequently ? 

Chr. The Apostles themselves were " eye-witnesses 
from the beginning." ^ '' That which was from the 
beginning, which we have heard, w^hich we have 
seen w^itli our eyes, which we have looked upon, and 
our hands have handled, of the Word of life ; that 
which we have seen and heard, declare we unto you, 
that ye also may have fellowship with us."^ 

Here are the '' outward," not the '' inward" senses 
appealed to by St. John, as well as by our Saviour, in 
confirmation of the Gospel. St. Peter, again, was, 
after the descent of the Holy Ghost at Whitsuntide, 
the first who appealed by preaching to the Jews, 
and he bases his address on the evidence of the Jews' 
own senses as to the works of Christ. '' Ye men of 
Israel, hear these words : Jesus of Nazareth, a man 
approved of God among you, by miracles, and 
wonders, and signs, which God did by Him in the 
midst of you, as ye yourselves also know. This Jesus 

^ Luke 1. 2 \ John i. 1, 3. 



SELF-SUSTAINING POWER OF CHRISTIANITY. 185 

hath God raised up, whereof we all are witnesses."^ 
Judge yourself then as to the correctness of this alle- 
gation of Xewman's, " that the first preachers of 
Christianity appealed to the inward senses as the 
supreme arbiters of the whole religious question/' 

Inf. I go on to another proposition of J^ewman, 
which I mention, because I am not aware that any 
one before him has ventured to make it. "This 
religion, Christianity, cannot pretend to self-sustain- 
ing power." 2 

Chr. How comes it then to be the religion of so 
great a portion of the world, — Europe, the Americas, 
Australasia, and a gradually increasing part of Asia ? 
At one time there was but one Christian, — Christ 
Himself, — on the earth, and He was crucified. Sup- 
posing, as Infidelity asserts, that He remains dead 
and powerless, his religion has certainly never ceased 
to increase the force and extent of its sway. All 
historians admit that it has managed to fight its own 
battles rather too effectively to please the mere 
secular sovereignties, among which it reigns as a 
spiritual empire. It has taken possession of every 
shrine and temple in Europe ; it has annihilated thb 
superstitions and idolatries of Antiquity ; and so far 
from exhibiting any symptom of decline, it continues 
to add people after people, nation after nation, to the 
long catalogue of its conquests. " They have turned 
the world upside down" was said of St. Paul, and its 
other champions in the first century of its propaga- 
tion. "This is the victory that overcometh the 
world," declares St. John, " even om* faith." It enu 

1 Acts ii. 22, 32. 2 phases of Faith, p. 98. 



186 WOMANHOOD AND CHRISTIANITY. 

merates " whole armies of martyrs ;" it points to sub- 
jects whose multitudes exceed the census of any em- 
pire that ever existed ; it reckons among its most 
devoted adherents the men that own no earthly fear, 
and in some form or other, — Home, Puritanism, Hu- 
guenotism, Crusadism — it is ever falling upon and 
shattering temporal states to fragments. 

Inf. In this assertion of I^ewman's I cannot con- 
cur. Christianity has proved itself to be a terribly 
subversive, as well as self-sustaining and progressive 
power. It is, in fact, ridiculous to affirm that a reli- 
gion which has augmented its votaries from twelve 
men to hundreds of millions, and its territories from 
" one upper chamber" to the dominion of half the 
globe, is not a self-sustaining power. 

Chr. The facts, as usual, are stubbornly unfavor- 
able and hostile to Infidelity. 

Inf. He may be more felicitous in his next state- 
ment. " We are told that Christianity is the deci- 
sive influence which has raised womankind. This 
does not appear to be true. The old Eoman matron 
was relatively to her husband morally as high as in 
modern Italy. In point of fact. Christian doctrine, 
as propounded by Paul, is not at all so honorable to 
woman as that which German soundness of heart 
has established. Paul does not encourage a man to 
desire a mutual soul intimately to share griefs and 
joys, one on whom the confiding heart can repose, 
whose smile shall reward and soften toil, whose 
voice shall beguile sorrow."^ 

1 Phases of Faith, p. 102. 



WOMANHOOD AND CHRISTIANITY. 187 

Chr. Well, as to the Roman matron, Newman ap- 
pends in a foot-note : — " It is not to the purpose to 
urge the political minority of the Roman wife. This 
was a mere inference from the high power of the 
head of the household. The father had right of 
death over his son, and, as the lawyers stated the 
case, the wife was on the level of one of the children."^ 
The Roman husband had absolute power of life and 
death over his v/ife ; the Christian husband has noth- 
ing of the kind, and with every deference to New- 
man's domestic ideas on this subject, the great ma- 
jority of women will, I think, consider such a change 
as being very much and decisively to the purpose of 
" raising" womanhood to an equality with manhood 
in social rights and privileges. But let us see what 
St. Paul really says : — 

" Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also 
loved the Church, and gave himself for it. So ought 
men to love their wives, as their own bodies. He 
that loveth his wife loveth himself. For no man 
ever yet hated his own flesh ; but nourisheth and 
cherisheth it, even as the Lord the Church. For we 
are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his 
bones. For this cause shall a man leave his father 
and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and 
they two shall be one flesh. This is a great mystery : 
but I speak concerning Christ and the Church. 
Nevertheless let every one so love his wife even as 
himself : and the wife see that she reverence her 
husband."^ 

1 Phases of Faith, p. 102. 2 Ephes. v. 25, 28-33. 



188 WOMANHOOD AND CHRISTIANITY. 

If the devotion of a husband's love towards his 
wife can be carried higher than St. Paul here en- 
joins, or on higher motives, the language for its 
expression remains to be discovered. It is as in- 
finitely superior to any which that native land of 
Infidelity and obscurity — Germany and Germanism 
— has ever penned, as the Christian mother and 
maiden are superior to the old Roman slave-wife,— 
for she was nothing higher, — or to the sanguinary 
viragos of old, or the sentimental heroines of modern 
Germany. Infidelity could never suggest so sublime 
and yet chivalrous a reason for conjugal affection as 
this of Christianity : " Husbands, give honor unto 
the wife, as unto the weaker vessel, and as being 
heirs together of the grace of life."^ This unites 
love and holiness in the marriage garland of immor- 
tality ; that single verse is to my mind worth all the 
books that Infidel intellect ever composed. The 
study of all its authors will never bring so much 
pure, genuine happiness to the domestic hearth, as 
the sanctifying this one brief precept of the Chris- 
tian faith. Woman is indebted for her restoration 
to Christ. "Where Christ is not known, woman is 
still a beast of burden or the degraded slave of pas- 
sion ; it is only in Him and by Him that she can re- 
cover her original equality with man. I consider 
the man who speaks against Christianity, however 
specious or poetic his diction and sentiments about 
" love and confiding hearts" may be, a traitor to the 
best interests of womanhood. Proceed. 

UPet. iii. 7. 



CHRISTIANITY AND SLAVERY. 189 

Inf. The rights, avers Newman, of men and nations 
are wholly ignored in the l^ew Testament, but the 
authority of slave-owners and of kings is very dis- 
tinctly recorded for solemn religious sanction.^ 

Chr. Ah ! most people think very differently on 
this point from Newman. " Proprium est Ecclesise 
Csesares odisse." The Popes and the "Western Church 
have not signalized themselves by any remarkable 
submissiveness to kings. 

Inf. Nor, unless when it suited her purpose, has 
your own Anglo- Catholic Church ; for she unkinged 
a certain James II., and disinherited his lineage, in 
spite of her passive obedience, homilies, and theory. 

Chr. And what was Cromwell's text-book against 
kings ? Was it not the Scriptures ? 

Inf. Nevertheless you do not answer Newman's 
political objection, that the rights of man and nations 
are wholly ignored in the New Testament. 

Chr. I do not, simply because I do not know what 
Newman means by the rights of man and of nations. 
Had he particularized them, we could bring him at 
once, as in our other instances, to Scripture. 

Inf. He specifies by implication one right. 

Chr. What is it ? 

Inf. The right of a man not to be forced into 
slavery. He affirms such a right to be ignored in 
the New Testament. 

Chr. Then he utterly misrepresents the New Tes- 
tament. St. Paul shall answer him. 

"Knowing this, that the law is not made for a 

1 Phases of Faith, p. 112. 



190 CHRISTIANITY AND SLAVERY. 

righteous man, but for the lawless and disobedient, 
for the ungodly and for sinners, for unholy and pro- 
fane, for murderers of fathers and murderers of 
mothers, for manslayers, for whoremongers, for de- 
filers of themselves with mankind, for men-stealers^ 
for liars, for perjured persons, and if there be any 
other thing that is contrary to sound doctrine, ac- 
cording to the glorious Gospel of the blessed God." ^ 

Traders in slaves, for such the original term dvdpa- 
Trodiorac means, are, you observe, classed by St. Paul 
with the most infamous criminals. Timothy is 
charged to denounce man-stealing in the Church as 
a high sin against the Law and Gospel of the glo- 
rious God. Mrs. Beecher Stowe could not, 1 think, 
vindicate the " right of man " from slavery in sterner 
language than St. Paul did at the first preaching of 
Christianity. 

Inf. But why was this denunciation against slavery 
so long overlooked ? 

Chr. For the same reason why other denunciations 
of Scripture against other sins are overlooked, wil- 
fully overlooked by men, because the denunciation 
militated against their temporal interests. Obedience 
involved the sacrifice of that interest. 

Inf. But was not this strong prohibition of slavery 
an addition of Paul's to the Gospel ? 

Chr. St. Paul never made any addition whatever 
to the Gospel. He constantly professes to deliver 
nothing of his own ; nothing but what he and the 
other Apostles had received from Christ. And thus 

1 1 Tim. i. 9. 



CHRISTIANITY AND SLAVERY. 191 

in this charge to Timothy, according to what is slave- 
dealing a sin ? "According to tne glorious Gospel 
of the blessed God which was committed to my 
trnst." In that trust St. Paul was ''faithful," and 
this fidelity he claims as, by the grace of God, his 
only merit. ''I thank Christ Jesus our Lord who 
hath enabled me." To denounce many of the crimes 
specified in the above passage, slave-dealing in- 
cluded, in the midst of a Pagan world wholly aban- 
doned to them, required greater physical and moral 
courage in St. Paul than modern times have yet 
been permitted to see exemplified in the person of 
Newman or any other word-ardent abolitionist. Yet 
Newman has the strange audacity to assert, " that it 
is in vain to deny that the most grasping of slave- 
owners asks nothing more of abolitionists than that 
they would all adopt Paul's creed !" 

Inf. Newman does not appear to have studied the 
Scriptures in their integrity, or he would not, I 
think, hazard statements so easily disproved. Here 
occurs another assertion of his : ^ " Lastly, it is a 
lamentable fact that not only do superstitions about 
witches, ghosts, devils, and diabolical miracles, de- 
rive a strong support from the Bible — (and in fact 
have been exploded by nothing but the advance of 
physical philosophy) — but what is far worse, the 
Bible alone has nowhere sufficed to establish an en- 
lightened religious toleration." 

Chr. The Bible reveals to us the existence of im- 
material powers, of a world of disembodied spirits, 

iPhases of Faith, p. 112. 



192 CHRISTIANITY AND SPIRITUAL MALADIES. 

capable of influencing and acting upon the world of 
embodied spirits. This revelation is in complete 
analogy with the rest of nature. All physical na- 
ture is permeated by invisible forces ; our own bodies 
are acted upon for life or death by such invisible 
agencies as heat, light, air, electricity, which are in 
fact the dynastic powers that pervade organized and 
unorganized matter alike. In the same way our 
souls are subject to the invisible influences of the 
disembodied spiritual world. N^ot only in this uni- 
verse is matter acted upon by matter, but mind is 
acted upon by mind, spirit by spirit, intellect by in- 
tellect, as between man and man, so also between 
man and the immaterial Intelligences. So far is the 
connection between such sentient existences " ex- 
ploded," that all modern discoveries tend to confirm 
the operation behind the visibilities of matter of 
powers invisible and distinct from matter. 

Inf. a person may, I think, hold such opinions in 
the abstract, without being chargeable with super- 
stition. 

Chr. 'Now in a book which, like the Scriptures, 
treats of the state of man before the redemption of his 
soul from the power of Satan by Christ, illustrations 
of the nature and extent of that power might be ex- 
pected to be given, and indeed to abound. 

Inf. I concede that there must have been great 
truthfulness of mind in the Evangelists in thus re- 
cording the existence, in full operation, of a fright- 
ful system of diabolical possession in man. The facts 
tliey state could scarcely be invented, still less in any 
age be mistaken for ordinary bodily maladies. It is 



CHRISTIANITY AND SPIRITUAL MALADIES. 193 

one of the pious frauds of yonr Bible commentators 
to endeavor to explain them into epilepsies, catalep- 
sies, and similar well-known disorders — with what 
eifect ? I throw the commentary down, exclaiming, 
" This man thinks, the Bible here tells a falsehood ; 
but he thinks, also, it will never do to let the world 
think so too — so he perverts the Scripture into its 
direct contrary" — as if the motive were not trans- 
parent to the Infidel ! I am not a universal Infidel, 
and in my judgment the Scriptures in this instance, 
considered in a philosophical light, supply us with 
valuable facts illustrative of a certain state of the 
human mind, which is, perhaps, though under modi- 
fied aspects, as prevalent now as ever it was in the 
world. 

Chr. Infidels are most inconsistent beings. It is 
difiicult to argue on the line with them. One mo- 
ment you take your stand on " science, philosophy, 
the march of intellect, and the nineteenth century" — 
the next, on the ruins of superstitions, in Newman's 
language, exploded by the advance of this very 
philosophy. 

Inf. But consider, it is extraordinary what very 
little real knowledge there is in the world ! We are 
as ignorant now as the forest savages, of the real 
nature of existences ! What is gravitation, what is 
sensation, what is thought, what is the principle of 
life and permanency ? — what, above all, is truth ? 

Chr. Is your Infidelity extending itself, or does 
this language mean that, without refiecting upon the 
fact, all knowledge reduces itself to you to a prin- 
ciple not unlike " faith ?" Conviction in the existence 

9 



194: CHRISTIANITY AND SPIRITUAL MALADIES. 

of things you feel and know to be, but cannot yet 
clearly see nor define. 

Inf. What profound ignorance in our scientific men 
these " spirit manifestations," so rampant of late in 
the two most advanced ''physical philosophy" coun- 
tries in the world, have exposed ? Absurd and silly 
as most of them are, yet others present difficulties 
of solution not to be denied, which science, however, 
attempts to evade by denying — and herein science is 
notoriously dishonest. I am inclined to suspect that, 
so far from such " superstitions" being exploded by 
philosophy, philosophy is in danger — unless it fairly 
confronts them — of being " exploded" by the super- 
stitions. Thus it is we attempt impossibilities in 
seeking to know what truly constitutes knowledge. 
The greater part of that which passes for it is mere 
organized verbiage ; analyzed, it leaves nothing but 
a sense of sound to fill the mind. 

Chr. Well, as Newman does not particularize any 
especial instance of " diabolical miracle" by which 
we could test the truth or consistency of his ideas 
on the subject, we must pass on to objections with 
which we can specifically deal. 

Inf. I shall adduce but one more from Newman's 
writings. Others of a deeper nature than any I find 
brought forward in his works, and more destructive, 
I think, of the pretensions of Christianity, will re- 
main to be discussed in my own name. Even on the 
validity of this last objection of .his, he and Martineau 
the Socinian differ. 

Chr. Newman and Martineau, immediately they 
differ from the Creeds of Christianity, proceed to 



"progressions of infidelity. 195 

differ from themselves, l^ewman first disbelieves all 
dogma, that is, all positive truth expressed in clear 
propositions, then he progresses to disbelieve the 
Church, which holds the truth in such forms, then to 
reject the Old Testament, anon the Nevs^, and finally 
terminates ''progress" by disbelieving Jesus Christ 
Himself, pronouncing, " that in consistency of moral 
goodness, Jesus fell far below vast numbers of his 
unhonored disciples."^ 

Inf. My allusion applies to that assertion. 

Chr. In these different steps of Infidelity, Marti- 
neau keeps time and pace with Newman till the last; 
there he unlinks his arm and quits him. Martineau 
" believes in Jesus Christ, not as very God, nor as 
the Saviour, but as the absolute moral image of 
man — the moral Head of the human race." "Where- 
upon JSTewman aptly retorts, "What, my Socinian 
friend, do you mean by 'Jesus?' Tou, with me, 
reject the Canon of the Old and IsTew Testament, the 
Creeds, and all authority in the Church ; you, with 
me, disbelieve the greater portion of the statements 
in these Scriptures about ' Jesus ;' your ideal of 
' Jesus ' is derived from that small quantum of the 
New Testament, which, out of the w^hole canon, it 
pleases you not to repudiate : what quantum is that? 
No one but yourself knows. I say it in deep se- 
riousness, not sarcastically — publish an expurgated 
Gospel : for, in truth, I do not know how much of 
what I have now adduced from the Gospel as fact, 
you will admit to be fact."^ Newman cannot accept 

^ Phases of Faith, p. 164. 2 ibid., p. 163. 



196 ''progressions of infidelity. 

Jesus in any authoritative capacity whatever. Marti- 
neau accepts as the moral model of humanity a cer- 
tain Jesus, which, however, is not the Jesus of the 
canonical Scriptures, nor of the Catholic Church, but 
of just so much of these Scriptures and Creeds as he 
chooses not to reject. Publish therefore, reiterates 
Newman, an expurgated Gospel — then I shall be 
able to judge whether your ideal Jesus is or is not 
a moral model. K Martineau did so, Newman most 
probably would intimate that he had not "pro- 
gressed" out of the Church, the Creeds, the canonical 
Scriptures, the faith in a Divine Jesus, to accept 
Martineau's Socinianism as his Church and creed, 
his " expurgated" Testament as his Gospel, or his 
mutilated ideal as his moral model. What, in fact, 
would such concession be but submission to Mar- 
tineau himself as Creed, Scripture, moral idea, and 
Church in one individual ? It would form a most 
humiliating terminus to the series of Newman's 
" progresses," that he should have disbelieved all 
things only to believe in Martineau alone at last. 

Inf. But dogmas appear to me very objectionable 
— religious dogmas especially. 

Chr. So are laws — criminal laws especially — ^lield 
by some to be highly objectionable. But why should 
a truth clearly and positively expressed, be more 
objectionable than the same truth negatively ex- 
pressed or obscurely implied ? Is it not indispensable 
that legal enactments against crime should be plainly 
and intelligibly worded ? 

Inf. But disbelief in a dogma is not a crime. 

Chk. Not in your opinion ; but in the opinion of 



"progressions" of infidelity. 197 

the Church, certain disbeliefs are regarded as crimes 
against God — sins. Acting on that opinion, she is 
right in wording her enactments against such sins in 
the clearest possible language. The question is not, 
here, ''Is her opinion right or wrong?" — but, her 
opinion being such, Is she not bound to state it in 
positive, unmistakable language? Then, as to im- 
posing such a dogma upon any one's mind, does not 
the law of England impose its dogmas on every Eng- 
lishman's mind ? Does not every Englishman make 
his peculiar pride to consist in obedience to the civil 
law ? — nevertheless he would impugn the honesty or 
ability of the legislature, if the law w^ere not posi- 
tively and dogmatically expressed. If the law did 
not "dogmatize" on theft, fraud, murder, felony, 
treason, no judge could expound the law, nor any 
jury find a verdict according to law. We cannot be 
Englishmen unless we accept and obey the law of 
England ; that law is definitely contained and posi- 
tively expressed in the civil and criminal code. We 
cannot be Churchmen unless we accept and act upon 
the dogmas of the faith of the Church ; these dogmas 
are laid down in their positive form in the Three 
Creeds. There is, surely, no shadow of spiritual tyr- 
anny exhibited in this necessary exercise of the 
Church's jurisdiction. If any justification were need- 
ed of the jealousy with w^liich the Church guards 
these bulwarks of the faith, it is amply supplied by 
the experience of all ages. All her children who re- 
main within them, remain within the faith, within 
the Scriptures, within Jesus Christ. They have ever 
proved the defences of salvation to her fold. For the 



198 "progressions of infidelity. 

sake of the souls in that fold, as well as from the sense 
of her duty to her Lord, she stands by both the ne- 
cessity and the value of having the orthodox dogmata 
of the faith impressed, in the most positive language, 
on the minds of her members. She, as the teacher, 
is bound to such perspicuity; they, as the taught, 
have a right to demand it at her hands. 

Inf. But of what real use are these Creeds ? — they 
convert none to Christianity. 

Chr. They keep people in Christianity. That is 
their use — and a very high use too. What was the 
first step in l^ewman's apostacy? Rejection of the 
Creeds. The last ? Eejection of our Saviour. What 
has the soul of either ITewman or Martineau now to 
rest upon? Absolutely nothing intelligible or ex- 
pressible to others. And what is the diflFerence, 
either in faith or science, between this sheer vacuum 
of all truth and the profoundest ignorance of every 
truth ? Yet this emptying forth of one sacred verity 
after another, till all being discharged, the soul re- 
mains a hollow desolation, ITewman characterizes as 
" progress " — steadfast adherence to the faith once 
for all delivered to the Church, he terms "bigotry." 

Inf. But he nevertheless retains one strong dogma. 
In p. 173 (Phases of Faith), he enunciates it thus: — 
"The great doctrine on which all practical religion 
depends is the sympathy of God with the perfection 
of individual man ;" — this is the Final Phase in his 
changes of faith, and contains in truth a noble sen- 
timent. 

Chr. It does so — but is it Kewman's ? 

Inf. Whose else? 



PRACTICAL INCAPACITY OF INFIDELITY. 199 

Chr. His who said, " Love your enemies, bless 
them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, 
pray for them that despitefuliy use you and persecute 
you. Be ye perfect, even as your Father which is in 
heaven is perfect."^ 

These are the words of Jesus Christ, of whom New- 
man writes, " It is possible the Gospel narrative is 
unjust to His memory. So far from being the picture 
of perfection, it sometimes seems to me the picture 
of a conscious and wilful impostor. His general char- 
acter is too high for this, and I therefore make de- 
ductions from the account. Still I do not see how 
the present narrative could have grown up if he had 
been really simple and straightforward, and not 
perverted by his essentially false position."^ Tet 
from this Jesus Christ, thus spoken of, Newman does 
not hesitate to plagiarize " the great doctrine " 
on which all practical religion depends, and into 
which all his own phases of faith resolve themselves 
as a final rest. Christ constantly taught this doc- 
trine ; He, through life and in death, exemplified 
it : He loved his enemies. He blessed tliem that 
cursed Him, He did good to them that hated Him, 
He prayed for them which despitefuliy used Him 
and persecuted Him — He was perfect, as his Father 
in heaven. Christians believe that God has so 
deeply sympathized with man, that in Jesus Christ 
He became both our Saviour from sin, and our per- 
fecter for a more glorious existence. Newman accepts 
the doctrine as the foundation of practical religion : 

1 Matt. V. 44, 48. spi^ases of Faith, p. 154. 



200 PRACTICAL INCAPACITY OF INFIDELITY. 

of Him who first taught it, and has alone in this 
world fully practised it, he declares that "He taught 
fanatical precepts, and advanced weak and foolish 
arguments ;" — adding, with a complacency evidently 
unconscious of the labyrinth of contradictions in 
w^hich he has involved himself, — " a new dispensa- 
tion is wanted to retrieve the lost reputation of 
piety." ^ 

** Quis tarn contrarius sibi V 

Inf. I observe such contradictions. He adopts as 
the one doctrine, jDar excellence in practice, one out 
of the many doctrines taught by Christ. He asserts 
it has already, for the last three thousand years, pro- 
duced bands of countless saints, yet affirms " sl new 
dispensation is wanted." His premises confute his 
inference. The doctrine he confesses has satisfied 
prophets, apostles, martyrs ; there plainly, therefore, 
can be no need of a new dispensation. 

Chr. But there is great need to guard that dis- 
pensation of Jesus Christ, which has confessedly 
produced such results, from being superseded by, or 
exchanged for any '' new" dispensation, which may, 
on very slight examination, prove like Kewman's last 
phase of faith, to be nothing more than a concealed 
plagiarism of one of the rudimentary teachings of 
Christ. Does this barrenness of invention again ex- 
hibit any intellect in infidelity ? The last '' phase" 
of its most talented advocate results in his being 
compelled, against his w^hole will and mind, to return 
whence he started, and immediately practical reli- 

1 Phases of Faith, p. 167. 



CHRISTIANITY AND SOCINIANISM. 201 

gibn is desiderated to sit down as a helpless child, 
and write out as " his own great doctrine," at the 
feet of Christ, one of the first elementary precepts the 
lips of Christ taught his disciples and the world. He 
know^s not where to go, except to him in whom he 
yet professes to have no faith. You will do wisely, 
I think, after such avowal of intellectual sterility, to 
look to other quarters than Newman for aid in your 
onslaught on Christianity and its founder. You can- 
not reasonably expect much from him who, in his 
first " practical" difficulty, falls back on the very 
religion he attacks. -._, .. 

Inf. Martineau, however, is, I understand, a Uni- 
tarian. Now I have always thought that if I became 
a Christian at all, I should become a Unitarian. 

Chr. All Christians hold to the unity or oneness 
of God, all are therefore Unitarians. 

Inf. One of that denomination, I mean, as opposed 
to Trinitarianism. 

Chr. Precisely ; who make the unity of the God- 
head a contradiction to the Trinity of the Persons, 
instead of, as the Church does, identifying the Trinity 
as one in the Unity, and the Unity as indivisible in 
the Trinity. The Church condemns the notion of 
such Unitarians, as implying a fracture in the Unity 
of the Godhead. They divide the substance or 
hypostasis of God, and then pronounce one-third 
part alone of that substance to be God. This is the 
same process as if a man, dividing the sun into three 
parts, insisted on one of these parts being the sun. 
Man is a unity of soul, mind, and body ; divide these 
into three parts, is any one of them by itself man ?" 



202 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCINIANISM. 

Thus, then, Unitarians, by some strange hallucina- 
tion, attempt to divide the indivisible, and would 
have us worship — were such a thing possible — the 
third part of God for God. 

Inf. But this is not the view entertained by them- 
selves of their tenets. They hold God to be one. 

Che. 'No doubt of it. So do all Christians ; so do 
the Mohammedans ; so do the Jews ; so did philo- 
sophic Greece. In this sense all these religions are 
Unitarian. 

Inf. But the Church holds that in this unity is a 
Trinity of Persons, the Godhead of these three 
Persons in the Trinity constituting the Unity of God. 

Chr. True ; a perfect, indivisible, co-eternal unity 
or oneness, the only " true" oneness that does exist ; 
all others so called being but unsubstantial reflec- 
tions of it. 

Inf. Unitarians believe such Trinity of Persons to 
have no existence whatever in the Unity. 

Chr. For which reason the Church refusing them, 
as mutilators of the Unity the name of Unitarians, 
terms them after one of their most notorious doctors, 
Socinus. Some call them Anti-Trinitarians, though 
this name Jews, Islamites, and heathens, share 
equally with them. So difficult is it to define in 
what doctrinal respects, on this point, the one is 
distinguished from the other. 

Inf. Let them share it, let such difficulty ensue. 
Between the Orthodox Church and these Unitarians, 
the difference in doctrine is deep and impassable — 
is it not ? 

Chr. Certainly. 



CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIMANISM. 203 

Inf. According to their own definition of Unity, 
they maintain the unity, and reject a Trinity, in the 
Godhead. 

Chr. Well? 

Inf. Then, to my mind, their view is both more 
simple, and more philosophic than that of the Or- 
thodox Church. The nations you named all hold 
God to be a Unity : the Church alone holds a Trin- 
ity in such Unity. Numbers and philosophy are 
against you. 

Chr. No ; the Church outnumbers these nations, 
but in a question of this kind numbers do not enter ; 
and as for philosophy, our proposition is, that be it 
philosophy or not, it is not Christianity. 

Inf. You do not, then, admit a Socinian to be a 
Christian ? 

Chr. a Christian is one who has faith in Jesus 
Christ as God incarnate ; a Socinian denies Him to 
be God at all : a Socinian, therefore, cannot with 
truth or propriety be called a Clirisrian. 

Inf. Nor in that sense do I think I could be a 
Christian. Socinianism presents to my judgment 
the right philosophic view" of Christ and Christian- 
ity. A Socinian, therefore, it is possible I may be- 
come, but not a Christian, one who believes that 
God became incarnate in Jesus Christ. 

Chr. You would then become a Socinian for tJiis 
reason — because you regard the view in which So- 
cinianism considers Christ the true philosophic view 
of Him. 

Inf. Yes. 

Chr. This view rejects and negatives Christ as God. 



204 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCINIANISM. 

Inf. It does : it considers Him a very pure, holy, 
and sublime character : the ideal of good, religious, 
spiritual manhood ; the best of men, the most per- 
fect model of manhood which has ever existed, still 
man only, not God. 

Chr. And you admit such view to be diametri- 
cally opposed to that of the Church Orthodox and 
Catholic ? 

Inf. I do. 

Chr. And if a Christian be one whose faith rests 
on Jesus Christ as being the Incarnation of God, 
you, thus denying such incarnation, would not claim 
to be a Christian ? 

Inf. I would not : I only claim to take the correct 
philosophic view of Christ. 

Chr. According then to this definition, the Uni- 
tarian or Socinian is not a Christian : he is the phi- 
losopher who takes not the Christian, but, neverthe- 
less, in his judgment the true view of the person of 
Christ. Am I right ? 

Inf. Quite. 

Chr. The question for decision, then, is this : — Is 
the Socinian view really philosophic or not? If, in- 
stead of being in any sense consistency or philoso- 
phy, it proves, on inquiry, to be a mass of contra- 
dictory propositions, you would, of course, reject its 
whole system as irrational and untenable. Let lis 
then, examine it. The fundamental tenet of Socin- 
ianism is, " Jesus Christ is not God, but He was the 
best and holiest of men." 

Inf. Pause a moment. Can you by any stretch 
of faith believe that the Almighty God ever could 



CHRISTIANITY AND SOCINIANISM. 205 

become man? That any man, at any time whatever, 
was, or is, also Ahnighty God ? 

Chr. What ! you a Pantheist, and ask such a 
question ? You who hold every part of nature to be 
part also of God, part consequently of omnipotence, 
to doubt whether '' the best and holiest of men" can 
be, in reference to God, w^hat nature even in her 
lowest types is — a materialism of Deity ! We hold 
but one incarnation of God — that one, Christ ; you 
hold millions — those millions, nature — yet object one 
to us. On your own theory, what can be Nature 
itself so much as the Incarnation ? 

Inf. Pass that by at present. I will recur to that 
point afterwards. Permit me now to argue, not as a 
Pantheist, but a Unitarian. 

Chr. Be it so. I first observe, then, that I might 
here turn with deadly effect against you, your ow^n 
argument of numbers. The whole religion of the 
East, from the earliest eras, and for the last eighteen 
centuries of the West also, has been, and is now, 
based on this all but universal faith in the incarna- 
tion or incarnations of Deity. Heathenism, Buddhism, 
Brahminism, believe in many, Christianity in one 
sole incarnation, Christ Jesus. This fact alone dis- 
poses of the possibility of such faith. Your question 
should rather be, " Is any faith real but that w^hich 
is grounded on such incarnation? Is any faith true 
but that which accepts the one true incarnation in 
Christ?" 

Inf. I cannot accept it. 

Chr. Are you all matter? 

Inf. No. 



206 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCINIANISM. 

Chr. Something which is not matter, lives and 
acts within you, is *' incarnate" within you, is different 
from, yet is one with, your body. You yourself are 
thus the fact of a spirit incarnate ; which fact, never- 
theless, being yourself, yourself cannot accept. Is this 
part of the same precious philosophy? If you cannot 
believe that which your own reason and senses prove 
to you of yourself, it would be preposterous to expect 
you to believe any proposition whatever of any thing 
not yourself. 

Inf. But the incarnation of a spirit is different in 
degree from the incarnation of God in Christ. 

Chr. It is, however, the essence of the principle 
at which you stumble, the incarnation of immortal 
spirit in mortal matter. 

Inf. I stumble at the idea of God Himself, the 
Author of all spirit and all matter, becoming in- 
carnate in one of His own creatures. 

Chr. God has in one sense been such an incarna- 
tion from the beginning ; the soul incarnate in man 
is an emanation of God at his creation. 

Inf. An emanation of God, but not God Himself, 
as you say Christ — God incarnate — was. 

Chr. True ; therein lies the distinction. Our 
souls incarnate were the creation of God. God in- 
carnate in Christ was and is the Uncreated Himself. 
We are incarnations of created spirits; Christ was 
the incarnation of the All-creating Eternal Spirit 
Himself. 

Inf. It is to me an incomprehensibility. 

Chr. a mystery may be entirely incomprehensible, 
and yet perfectly true ; and a thousand hard, obvious 



CHRISTIANITY AND SOCINIANISM. 207 

faois may be adduced in proof of its truth. Tou 
cannot comprehend the incarnation of spirit in man ; 
thousands of such incarnate spirits accost your 
senses, exchange with you thoughts, emotions, 
counsels, — experiences of which matter by itself is 
neither capable nor cognizant. Each of these thou- 
sands is a mystery, and yet a truth confronting you 
face to face every day of your life. Every day you 
meet as a fact, what, as a mystery, you find utterly 
incomprehensible and inexplicable. 

Inf. But I still persist that the incarnation of God 
Himself, as Jesus Christ, must be rejected as incredi- 
ble by philosophy. 

Chr. The belief in the Incarnation is as far above 
a certain kind of philosophy as the soul of Newton 
was above his apple. It is the faith, M^hich, rising 
from the Cross and Resurrection of Christ, pierces 
through the very heavens to the throne of its Divine 
Object, Author, and Finisher, and from the creation 
it has been, in either its true or some corrupt form, the 
faith of the human race. Christianity teaches such 
universal faith to have received its realization in the 
incarnation of God in Christ. Socinianism repre- 
sents Christ as merely a good man, and, ignoring the 
radical truth at the base of all religions, affirms such 
representation to be sound philosophy. Let us 
analyze its claim to this assumption ; let us inquire 
whether, upon the Socinian view of Christ as man 
only. He was a good man or not. 

Inf. You go beyond me now. Do you assert that 
Christ was not a good man? 

Chr. I mean that Christ, if he were merely what 



208 CHRISTIANITY AND SOGINIAKISM. 

the Socinians maintain — man only — could not be " a 
good man." Their theory destroys itself. He could 
not, were He man only, speak, act, and promise as 
He did and yet be a good man, far less the ideal of 
human goodness. If He were not God as well as 
man. His character assumes a very different aspect 
indeed from that of " goodness." 

Inf. You, at any rate, argue boldly, and to the 
point. 

Chr. Christianity should always do so. Let us 
take our Lord's own words — a few instances will 
suffice : we could quote fifty illustrations of the same 
kind, but the force of the argument needs no addi- 
tion. 

Inf. But you must not quote, as Scripture, any 
portion of your canon which the Socinians reject as 
Scripture. 

Chr. I have no intention of doing so, though if we 
rejected what they do, we should consider ourselves 
indirectly rejecting all Scripture, from beginning to 
end. They cut out every verse which refers to 
Christ in His Divine nature, on which rule every 
book in the Scriptures should be cut out ; for every 
book, every chapter, is instinct with the Divinity of 
the Messiah. Suppose you took a knife, and deny- 
ing the existence of life in a certain animal, pro- 
ceeded to amputate successively every limb or 
member which most vividly displayed the action of 
life ; and the mutilated body still exhibiting symptoms 
of vitality, you finally dispatched the trunli also, 
and then exclaimed, " I told you there was no life in 
that animal!" Much in this way, to my mind, the 



CimiSTIANITY AND SOCINIANISM. 209 

Socinians treat the Bible : wherever thej can they 
cut out its life, which is Christ. Isaiah, St. John, 
St. Paul, St. Peter, being got rid of, the same life 
yet palpitates in Moses, Jeremiah, St. Matthew, St. 
James : as long as they leave one joint of a finger of 
that divine hand unmutilated, it wdll remain vitally 
expressive of the Godhead of Him by whose Spirit 
the whole Scriptures were animated and inspired. 
Socinianism, therefore, in a critical sense, is merely 
mutilation of the Scriptures; but I am dealing with 
it as a system of pretentious, but unsound philosophy. 
I w411 cite such evidence only as the Socinians 
themselves allow to be Scripture ; not even the 
apostles' words, but the words of Christ Himself. 

" Every one that hath forsaken houses, or brethren, 
or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, 
or lands, for my name's sake, shall receive an 
hundredfold, and shall inherit everlasting life."^ 

" The High Priest asked him, and said unto him, 
Art thou the Christ, the Son of the Blessed ? And 
Jesus said, I am : and ye shall see the Son of man 
sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in 
the clouds of heaven."^ 

'' When the Son of man shall come in his glory, 
and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit 
upon the throne of his glory : and before him shall 
be gathered all nation^; and he shall separate them 
one from the other. And these shall go away into 
everlasting punishment : but the righteous into life 
eternal."^ 

1 Matt. xix. 29. ^ Mark xiv. 61. 

'Matt. XXV. 31, 32, 46. 



210 CHRISTIANITY ANB SOCINIANISM. 

" All things are delivered unto me by the Father : 
and no man knoweth the Son, but the Father ; nei- 
ther knoweth any man the Father but the Son, and 
he to whom the Son will reveal Him."^ 

" Ye shall be hated of all men for my name's sake : 
but he that endureth unto the end shall be saved. 

''I am come to set a man at variance against his 
father, and the daughter against her mother, and the 
daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. He that 
loveth father or mother more than me, is not worthy 
of me : and he that loveth son or daughter more 
than me, is not w^orthy of me. He that findeth his 
life shall lose it, and he that loseth his life for my 
sake, shall find it."^ 

" All power is given unto me in heaven and in 
earth. Lo ! I am with you alway, even unto the end 
of the world." ^ 

" Preach the Gospel to every creature. He that 
believeth and is baptized shall be saved ; but he that 
believeth not shall be damned."^ 

Here are a certain number of assertions relative to 
Himself made by Jesus Christ. He affirms of Him- 
self that He is Almighty — that all power is given 
unto Him in heaven and earth. Is this that He 
affirms of Himself true or false ? If true, He is more 
than man, and Socinianism is false ? If false. He can- 
not be a '' good man," and Socinianism is again on 
that proposition false. 

He affirms that He will give everlasting life to 
such as sacrifice their temporal interests for His 

1 Matt. xi. 27. '' Matt. x. 22, 33, 37, 39. 

3 Matt, xxviii. 20. -* Matt. xvi. 15, 16. 



CHISTIANITY AND SOCINIANISM. 211 

name's sake. It is no exaggeration to say, that 
since He has thus spoke, countless numbers have, in 
reliance on these and similar promises, sacrificed 
themselves and the world for His sake — men and 
women admitted by the w^orld itself to be good, 
earnest, high-principled characters. Have such been 
deceived or not by Christ ? Can He give such a 
thing as >' everlasting life?" If He can. He is more 
than man ; if He cannot. He has beguiled and be- 
trayed tens of thousands of the gentlest, noblest, and 
most confiding natures the w^orld has produced, and 
cannot, therefore, be a good man. In either view 
Socinianisni is untenable. 

He affirms that He will sit on the throne of his 
glory, as the Christ, the Son of the Blessed : that He 
will assemble all nations : that He will distinguish 
between the righteous and the wicked : that He will 
condemn the latter to everlasting punishment, and 
reward the former with everlasting life. Can mere 
man do this? Can one man — being man only — 
adjudge, and that forever, all mankind to heaven or 
hell ? Will any philosophy admit this ? Is Socin- 
ianism philosophy when it assumes it ? But if Christ 
judges not as man only, but as God also, what again 
becomes of Socinianisni ? On either supposition its 
system falls to fragments. 

He asserts that, in comparison with devotion to- 
wards Him, the most sacred human affections must 
be immolated and abandoned : He states that this 
principle will introduce " variance" into every family : 
that for acting upon it his followers will be hated of 
all men : yet every one that endures to the end shall 



212 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCINIANISM. 

be saved. Take any man : put these words into his 
mouth : supposing him to be man only, could you 
say a character avowing this principle of the domestic 
sword, and proclaiming beforehand the inevitable 
results of the operation of such a principle between 
parents and children, brothers and sisters, was a 
" good man" — the " holiest of men ?" Would it be 
sense, reason, or philosophy for any mere human 
being, on a par with ourselves, to use this language 
towards our finest and most sacred affections; to 
command, when He was in question, this universal 
disruption of natural ties — and that on the strength 
of a promise which nothing short of omnipotence 
can realize — that the loss of life in the discharge of 
such obedience would insure its eternal duration in 
heaven ? 

He asserts that he is everywhere present wher- 
ever the Gospel is preached to any creature : that 
of all the human beings to whom it is preached, 
such as believe and are baptized shall be saved, and 
such as believe not shall be damned. Can mere man 
be omnipresent, or is this all a deception and a de- 
lusion? Can mere man, of his own manhood, pre- 
scribe the conditions of salvation, or inflict damna- 
tion at pleasure on the whole of his own race? If 
not, and if Christ were man only, what opinion must 
we, from these ^vords, form of his character ? By 
these, and a multitude of other proofs which I rev- 
erentially abstain from adding, it is, I think, clear 
that Jesus Christ was either more than man, or, if 
man only. He could not truly be termed a " good 
man," the ideal of human goodness and holiness. 



CHKISTIANIIY AND SOCINIANISM. 213 

Consider it in any way you please, Socinianism con- 
futes its own pretensions. It is neither Scripture nor 
reason, neither philosophy nor Christianity. 

Inf. But do yon consider Jesus Christ responsi- 
ble — as it were — ^for all the effects of His words, 
from His death to the present moment ? 

Chk. Take np the Scriptures; read them with 
ordinary attention : judge if Christ spoke a single 
sentence but what carries on the face of it His inten- 
tion that it should make an indelible impression on 
every one who heard it, or to whom it should be 
made known. He puts the weight of eternity upon 
every word He speaks. " Heaven and earth shall 
pass away, but my Word shall not pass aw^ay." He 
is, therefore, in your phrase, responsible, not for what 
this or that sect may have perverted His meaning into, 
but for the plain, direct meaning His words them- 
selves convey, which He designed them to convey, 
which with the most expressive solemnity He assures 
US will be verified, and to the least iota substantiated 
by the action of omnipotence. It seems to me that 
we only then, for the first time, discover the infinite 
gravity of w^ords, as what they ought to be — the 
pure expression of pure truth — when we first hear 
Christ speak. Think you that He who declared, " by 
thy words shalt thou be judged, by thy words shalt 
thou be condemned— Yerily I say unto you, that 
for every idle word which men shall speak, they 
shall give an account at the day of judgment," was 
one Himself to speak unadvisedly with His lips on 
subjects w^hich are universally felt to be the most 
awful that can affect the heart and soul of man ? He 



214: CHRISTIANITY AND SOCINIANISM. 

intended every word He spoke to be weighed by 
every one of us, for life or death. ''Whosoever 
heareth those sayings of mine and doeth them, I 
will liken to a wise man ; whosoever doeth them not, 
I will liken him to a foolish man." 

Inf. Then, for all the sufferings of good men — as 
we call them — undergone in this world purely for 
the sake of Ohrisfc, vou hold Christ Himself on His 
own words responsible. 

Che. He Himself claims such responsibility ; He 
states that He Himself must be the cause and the 
motive of all such sacrifices and sufferings : His 
whole religion, in this respect, is comprehended in 
one phrase, ^' For my sake." " In that ye do it, ye 
do it unto me." He promises nothing certain in this 
world but the cross ; the crown He defers to another 
existence. Is such a crown of everlasting life at His 
absolute disposal or not ? 

Inf. The Socinian would say, " No." Everlasting 
life can be the gift of God only. If Christ has such 
gift at command. He must of necessity be God. 

Chr. Everywhere throughout the Scriptures He 
alleges it to be entirely in His hands. He promises 
it everywhere to the righteous as His gift. Is the 
redemption of that promise within His power or 
not? Multitudes of earnest men have sacrificed all 
earthly prospects upon the faith of that promise. 
Has Christ practised a deception upon them or not ? 

Inf. That question goes to the root of the matter. 

Chk. It does. It shows Socinianism in its real 
light. If it be beyond the power of Christ to verify 
such promise, then is He the most cruel of all im- 



CHRISTIANITY AND SOCINIANISM. 215 

posters, and the noblest-hearted of mankind have 
been His dupes and victims. He is the reverse of a 
good or holy man. If, on the other hand, the re- 
demption of this promise be, as He affirms, and as 
Christians believe, absolutely in His power, — if He 
Himself be this eternal life, and can communicate 
Himself to whomsoever He pleases, — then is He not 
man only, but infinitely greater in nature and power 
than man. Thus again, on the largest scale, Socini- 
anism not only confutes, but reverses its own theory 
of the person and character of Christ. Denying 
Him as God, it must upon its own premises deny 
Him also as " a good or holy man," for it holds Him 
up as a mere man leading thousands to misery and 
martyrdom on the faith of promises which no mere 
man can perform. In what character of Christ, then, 
does Socinianism end ? Is it not that of an unparal- 
leled false prophet and deceiver of souls, and yet it 
styles itself " Philosophic Christianity !" 

Inf. But whatever the inference may be, it is un- 
deniably true that Jesus Christ has induced countless 
numbers to voluntarily undergo the severest priva- 
tions and pains in sole dependence on His promise of 
eternal happiness in heaven. Will they be deceived 
or not ? 

Chr. That, as you observe, is the question which 
Socinianism has to answer, and yet remain Socini-. 
anism, yet continue to maintain that He is both 
mere man, and the holiest and best of men. Our 
lips refuse to express, even on supposition, w^hat, if 
the Socinian tenet were true, the conduct of Christ 
must be confessed to have been. But if these 



216 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCINIANISM. 

promises are more certain to be redeemed than our 
senses are at this moment certain of the existence of 
heaven and earth, and if their redemption can only 
be effected by omnipotence in the Redeemer Himself, 
then Jesus Christ is more than man. Socinianism is, 
in its whole conception of Him, as self-contradictory 
as it is blind to the true nature of the religion and 
kingdom which He has revealed. 

Inf. But the Socinian may say that Christ deceived 
others, being Himself deceived. Good men may, as 
to abstract doctrines, unwittingly deceive others, yet 
be in their lives models of morality and personal 
goodness. 

Che. Christ nowhere glances at the possibility of 
His being deceived. He constantly affirms that what 
He teaches man is that which He Himself had seen 
and heard in heaven : that He testifies of realities in 
the midst of which He had Himself reigned as God. 
There was nothing abstract or separate from Himself 
in His doctrines ; they were simply to Him facts of 
Himself, the revelation of which, as the knowledge 
of the true God, and His kingdom of everlasting life, 
He came down in His incarnate state to communicate 
to mankind. 

Inf. Rejecting then Socinianism as inconsistent 
with itself, as neither religion nor reason, though I 
inclined to believe it united both in an easy form, I 
again fall back on Infidelity. You concede Christ 
has caused an incalculable amount of individual 
suffering in the world ; He Himself calls every one 
to the Cross ; the best men as it were respond to the 
call ; they live suffering, they die suffering. Now if 



CHRISTIANITY AND SOCmiANISM. 217 

the crown of heaven, if eternal life with God be a 
deception — 

Chr. Well, what then ? 

Inf. Certainly Christ was not a good or holy man. 

Chr. That was not what you were about to say ; 
you intended, I think, to express some much stronger 
sentiment. 

Inf. I did. 

Chr. What prevented you ? 

Inf. I cannot explain. But I mean that any be- 
ing, who, knowing such promise to be deceptive, and 
foreseeing also the consequences of practising such 
deception, through unborn generations, upon the 
souls of the most sensitive and amiable of mankind, 
nevertheless shrunk not from carrying it out at the 
cost of His own crucifixion — 

Chr. Finish. 

Inf. He would, in any view, be an awful being. 

Chr. Tou fear to state, in plain language, the con- 
clusion from such premises. The Jews had no such 
fear. They beheld Christ exercising uncontrollable 
power over nature ; they felt His spiritual power 
over their own souls : they listened to doctrines 
which it needed no philosophy to tell them could be 
exemplified only by human nature everywhere-j — 
their own and the heathen alike, — sustaining the 
cross of shame and suffering. They did not say that 
He was mere man. They asked Him who and what 
He was, and whose authority He bore and represented. 
He told them He was God as well as man, — the God 
of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, — the I AM of eternity, 

— the future Judge of the universe. For that they 

10 



218 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCINIANISM. 

crucified Him, because, as they truly said, " He made 
himself equal with God." But they never regarded 
Him as mere man ; their decision was direct and to 
tlie purpose., there could be no middle supposition. 
If the being who stood among them, and whose 
presence they felt was beginning to shake the whole 
world, was not God, He was the Prince of darkness ; 
if He was not heayen. He was helL The Scriptures 
record the reasoning and deduction of the Jews with- 
out any modification of their language. On their 
own premises, the reasoning of the Jews was correct. 
We thus come to the tremendous precipice to which 
logical Infidelity and Unitarianism thrust their pro- 
fessors, a few steps after their rejection of the God- 
head of Christ. 

Inf. Can there be no medium between these two 
extremes ? Mnst Christ be received as God, or re- 
nounced as the Power of darkness ? 

Chr. If Christ be a deceiver of souls, most cer- 
tainly He is not a human one ; if neither divine, nor 
human, what remains it that He is? Here are a 
host of facts connected with Christ, His mission and 
character, w^hich immediately He is confessed in the 
truth of his nature, " God of the substance of his 
Father, begotten before all worlds, man of the sub- 
stance of his mother born in the world," present us 
with their own solution. Christ being God, these 
facts could not be otherwise. Reject Him as God, 
the mystery of Christ, so far from being solved, be- 
comes such as no earthly knowledge can explain, no 
philosophy confront, no heart of man reflect upon 
without horror and trembling. 'No other view than 



CHRISTIANITY AND SOCINIANISM. 219 

that delivered to and by the Church explains the 
mystery of Christ. Philosophy or Unitarianism, 
when it wanders from the Church, finds itself, im- 
mediately upon its own principles, brought into the 
presence of a Being it shrinks from naming ; it re- 
coils from the mingled fire and thick darkness of 
its own chaos ; it shudders at the infernal potency, 
the omnipotence of cruelty and evil, into which its 
" intellect" is every moment on the point of changing 
that " God over all, blessed forever." If you abandon 
Infidelity, you will not, I conclude, attempt to seek 
your rest in that most hopeless of all compromises 
between truth and falsehood — Socinianism. 

Inf. Do Christians themselves understand the full 
purport of the words they use concerning Christ as 
God? 

Chr. It is entirely their own fault if they do not. 
No terms are too clear or forcible for the Scriptures 
themselves to use in bringing us to a right under- 
standing of what Christ was and is. If we desired, 
with all our command of modern languages and 
science, to define God, could we do it more expressly 
or energetically than in such terms as these: ''By 
him were all things created that are in heaven, and 
that are in earth, visible and invisible; all things 
were created by him and for him : he is before all 
things, and by him all things consist."^ 

Inf. Is that language applied to Christ ? 

Chr. Expressly to Him who has made peace by 
the blood of the Cross. 

1 Coloss. i. 16, 17. 



220 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCINIANISM. 

Inf. And you, as an orthodox Cliristiaj;!, do not 
shrink from maintaining that unless a man believes 
Christ, on His being preached to him as the object 
of faith, to be this eternal God incarnate, he must be 
damned ? 

Chr. Whosoever, on having Christ thus proposed 
to him, " as very God of very God," rejects Him 
as such, will be most assuredly damned. If Christ 
be God, and being God has for our salvation become 
" JesuB Christ crucified," how, in common -sense, can 
there be any other salvation accorded of God than in 
Him ? "What else but perdition can be the result of 
deliberately rejecting God in Christ crucified for us? 
Consider the " sham" to which the contrary opinion 
reduces Christianity. 

Inf. Ah ! I see that. 

Chr. And as an Infidel consistently wish it true. 
You wish it to be a safe procedure to reject Chris- 
tianity, and if the crucified Saviour were not also 
your God — the God that made you, soul, mind, and 
l)ody — you see it might possibly be a safe procedure. 
But if he be indeed your God, it strikes you instinc- 
tively that the rejection of your God, crucified to save 
you from the loathsomeness of sin, must be damna- 
tion. It cannot be otherwise. It is not sin, or any 
taint or act of sin, that now need damn any man 
whatever ; for the pardon and expiation of such the 
atonement of God is provided, but for the rejection 
of that atonement, '' sin" is not the right word ; it is 
something ten thousand times — if such can be — 
worse than sin ; it involves in the act itself the 
whole body, guilt, consummation, and final penalty 



JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH ITS OIBTHODOX SEJSSE. 221 

of sin, and doing so must in itself be damnation. It 
is not sin, but the rejection of Christ as God incar- 
nate, crucified to save us from sin, that now damns a 
man. 

Inf. But it is not with such faith as this that your 
pulpits resound. " Justification by faith," not " faith 
in Christ crucified as the eternal God," appears to 
me the watchword of at least a large party in your 
Church. They put forward a feeling instead of a 
fact as the ground of man's justification. Faith as a 
feeling or faculty exists in every individual — heathen 
or Christian. The Turk has faith, but it is in Mo- 
hammed ; the Tartar has faith, but in the Dalai-La- 
ma ; the Negro has faith, but in his fetish, which is 
perhaps a serpent ; when I hear, therefore, faith in- 
sisted on as the sine qua non of salvation, the preacher 
appears to me to be beating the air ; he is insisting 
on the necessity of the existence of a feeling which 
does already exist in every human being. All have 
faith, but in what is a man to have faith ? What is 
to be the objective being or fact of his faith ? The 
Mohammedan faith has for its objective fact, the 
divine mission of Mohammed. His faith is often 
much more zealous, fervent, and self-impressive than 
that of a Christian ; but the objective fact being 
false, — no fact at all, — the faith itself is also false — 
faith in a lie. So with other superstitions. Faith in 
a fallacy is superstition. When therefore an evan- 
gelical Christian harps to me continually on his one 
solitary string of ''justification by faith," I demand 
what faith, faith in what specific external fact ? Or 
is it justification by the mere feeling or faculty of 



222 JUSTIFICATIOJSr by faith ITS ORTHODOX SENSE. 

faith itself? Then are the Mohammedan and the 
Idolater equally justified with the Christian, for all 
have faith in the abstract, and if faith as a feeling 
justifies them, all are equally justified. Why then 
should I be a Christian rather than a Mohammedan ? 
But you hold that it is not the mere feeling or fac- 
ulty of faith, but the truth of the objective matter 
of faith, which constitutes the sine qua non of jus- 
tification. 

Chr. Yes. 

Inf. Let me clearly understand. I have faith in 
Mohammed as a divinely-commissioned prophet. 
That faith being faith in a lie, is of no use, is vain. 

Ohr. Is most pernicious. 

Inf. I have faith in Jesus Christ as a divinely- 
commissioned prophet, but not as God. That faith, 
being faith in only part of the fact, is a sujppressio 
veri^ and of no salvatory efiicacy. 

Chr. N"one ; the verum so suppressed is the very 
essential of the whole fact which makes faith in it 
the faith of salvation ; that verum so suppressed is 
the grand truth which makes the faith holding it for 
its objective fact the true faith. All faiths in any 
other fact than this are, in reference to any salvatory 
virtue on the human soul, delusive and vain. 

Inf. Tlien the evangelical party have infiicted 
great damage on Christianity, by substituting the 
universal human feeling of faith for the objective 
Being and fact of the only true faith — a God-Saviour 
crucified. 

Chr. I will not affirm so. The old Evangelicals 
took their stand in the midst of a Socinian and 



JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH ITS ORTHODOX SENSE. 223 

eartlily-minded generation on the Divine truths and 
doctrines of revelation. Imitators and mere parti- 
sans, — always ''servile pecus," — have copied their 
phraseology, and have thus imposed upon themselves 
and the world as Evangelicals. 

Inf. But however servile, is not their maxim, that 
"justification by faith" is the test of a falling or 
standing Church, historically correct? 

Chr. The maxim was Luther's. What has become 
of the Lutheran churches on the Continent ? They 
are either extinct or lapsed into congregations of 
Infidels. In the Lutheran sense not only is not the 
maxim true, but every sect that has held it in such 
sense has either disappeared, or apostatized to Infi- 
delity or Socinianism. 

Inf. Does not your own Church hold the doctrine 
of justification by faith only? 

Chr. In a very different sense from the Lutheran 
or the pseudo-evangelical acceptation. In the second 
part of the Homily of Salvation, our Church explains 
her meaning : '' The true understanding of this doc- 
trine, that we be justified freely by faith without 
works, or that we be justified in Christ only^ is, that 
we must trust only in God's mercy, and that sacrifice 
which our High Priest and Saviour, Christ Jesus^ the 
Son of God^ once offered for us upon the cross, to 
obtain thereby God's grace and remission as well 
of our original sin in baptism, as of all actual sin 
committed by us after our baptism, if we truly repent 
and turn unfeignedly to Him again." Tlie Lutherans 
l?ty the whole stress on '' faith only" as an abstract 
faculty, — our Church on faith in no abstract sense 



224 ABSTRACT FAITH VALUELESS. 

whatever, but in Jesus Christ only as the Son of God, 
offered for ns upon the cross. 

Inf. The difference is great and striking. But yet 
the Lutheran view is much the more comfortable of 
the two. 

Chk. Perhaps so. 

Inf. And the more liberal. 

Chr. How so ? 

Inf. It makes the attainment of salvation more 
inclusive, co-extensive with the existence of the 
abstract feeling of faith in man ; whereas you limit 
such attainment to one exercise and appropriation of 
that feeling ; with you it must cease to be abstract, 
and none can be saved but such as receive Jesus 
Christ as the Incarnation of the eternal God for the 
sole object of their faith. Am I correct? 

Chk. Every man, possessing faith as an internal 
power, has by its right exercise the possibility of 
salvation in his own hands. Salvation is thus pos- 
sible to all : but they alone attain it who attach 
their faith to its proper object in the true character 
of that object. The same principle regulates the 
application of all other human faculties. 

Inf. Observe then what a much more awful thing 
Christianity is made by you than it is by the 
Lutherans, or the Abstractionists, who teach that 
faith in Christ, without defining what Christ is, is 
sufficient to save. 

Chr. Very true. 

Inf. I am on an equality with man, and if Christ 
be man only, with Christ. Supposing His Crucifixion 
as man only to be an atonement, the effects are 



FAITH IN THE GODHEAD OF CHRIST. 225 

divided among so many countless millions of souls, 
that my individual obligation to Him is reduced to 
an infinitesimal minimum. But if He be God, God 
has already made me what I am : He has, as it were, 
come upon me previously in my whole being: so 
that what Christ does for me as God in salvation is 
that which, as God, He has already previously done 
for me in creation. I thus come with my whole be- 
ing, not in an infinitesimal proportion of it, into col- 
lision with Him. 

Che. Soundly argued. 

Inf. But, as an Infidel, I do not, if there be a God, 
desire to come thus into either contact or collision 
with Him. Now God, as He is in the universe, says 
nothing whatever to me. He leaves me entirely to 
my own nature, as he leaves the horse, the ox, the 
tiger, to theirs. I abuse that nature just as I please, 
to this or that gratification of mind or body ; I at 
last fall asleep, become insensible as the clay, and 
return to nothing; there is the end of nature and 
myself to me. But you bring in a God who speaks 
to me — who addresses Himself to me individually ; 
a Word of God, which Word is itself also the creative 
and regenerative or sustaining power — which Word 
once did, and perhaps still does, create nature out of 
nothing. And He proflFers to create my nature anew. 
But I am content with my nature : it satisfies me ; I 
only wish its pleasures would last forever ; I only de- 
sire to be ever young, ever rich, ever healthy, ever 
free, and that in such a world as the present. What 
can be more reasonable ? But you present me, not 

10- 



226 FAITH IN THE GO]:)HEAD OF CHRIST. 

a mere man suffering, for whom would so common 
a matter as that affect ? But the God who created 
me, crucified for me. Why ! what is there in me, or 
my nature, which calls for any other but at the best 
a silent God ? why a speaking God ? why, above all, 
God in Christ crucified ? An Infidel is much happier 
than a Christian. An Infidel sins, as you would 
term it, and by sinning probably shortens his life by 
a few years ; what then ? He has surely the right of 
doing what he pleases with himself. Nature pays its 
own penalty. What more should its Creator exact, 
what more is He entitled to ? The Infidel is buried, 
feels nothing, turns to earth and grows corn for the 
next generation. In all this there is nothing to fear, 
— a man knows the worst, dust, unconsciousness, in- 
sensibility. Children play on your grave ; what are 
they to you, or you to them, or to any other being in 
creation ? what necessity is there you should be any 
thing ? you are nothing. Is this Infidelity ? No. It 
is taking nature and all things else as they really are, 
and being satisfied to take them as such. Infidelity 
is simply — realities; religion, simply ^imagination. 
A hero resolves, '' I will do a great act or die ; death 
is merely insensibility, and this is the worst that can 
befall me. Well, I have exhausted all the ' sensibil- 
ities' which yield me the slightest pleasure, their loss 
will be trivial, and nothing more is death — which, 
therefore, is not to be compared to my gain, if this 
act succeeds." But Christianity utterly destroys such 
a spirit as this. A believer cannot argue in this way, 
he becomes a coward ; death is only a transition to 
him, — after it come God, judgment, eternity. What 



CHRIST AND INFIDELITY. 227 

makes liim a coward, but as Shakspeare says, '* his 
conscience ?" AVliat is conscience but every man's 
own measure of knowledge ? What, in nine out of 
ten cases, is a man's knowledge but what he is 
taught ? Christianity seizes on every child and 
teaches it ; the teaching becomes knowledge, knowl- 
edge conscience, and conscience the man. Is^ow to 
be really great, a man must burst these fetters : the 
original meaning of the word ''religion" itself, is 
'' the bond, or that which holds a man back ;" such 
bond once broken, the emancipated man goes free : 
he must be his own God, gospel, and church. How 
else, among the subtle but steel-strong meshes your 
religion weaves around our earliest prepossessions, can 
man attain independency of thought or action ? Any 
religion at all is shackles and slavery. 

Chr, I listen — and presently will reply. 

Inf. You cannot deny that religion, especially if 
driven into us when infants, fetters the whole future 
man. ISTot one in ten thousand ever liberates himself 
from his child-religion. It is associated with memories 
of their mother, their little brothers and sisters, their 
days of innocence, some good clergyman, holidays, 
and festivals ; their first sensations, blessings over 
their nightly pillow with kisses and prayers, trem- 
blings of their early hearts at catecliisings, confirma- 
tion, first communions, and, if they have a clever 
priest to deal with, first confessions. They are turned 
out of this paradise into the world, and are roughly 
handled ; they handle as roughly in return ; they 
become for years thorough woi'ldlings. Then ensues 
the reaction, and, as Solomon savs, when they are 



228 CHRIST AND INFIDELITY. 

old, perhaps long before, they go right back into the 
way of their child- training : in it they educate their 
own children ; they make a sacred conscience of it ; 
if they would, they cannot think otherwise ; to their 
death they remain their own childhood in religion. 
And if a person of liberal opinions argue with them 
on the folly of hereditary faith, he is ever after pro- 
scribed the family, and denounced as every thing im- 
pious and dangerous. See, then, the tyranny which 
Christianity exercises over a man's own conscience, 
over all other people's consciences, between my con- 
science and theirs; over this life, over the imagi- 
nations of the next life — over childhood, over matu- 
rity, over age. How can you, therefore, uphold such 
a system ? Parts of it, I grant, may be well defended 
— but, as a whole, it is indefensible. Now, as you 
admit the whole strength of your religion to consist 
in the supposed fact that " Jesus Christ is God as well 
as man," it follows that whatever else I may believe 
Him to be — " the best of men," the holiest of saints — 
does not suffice : I must accept him as that tremendous 
Omnipotence, the portal of whose works human phi- 
losophy has scarcely yet entered — as the First Cause, 
so almighty that its volition alone is creation, is that 
which turns nothing into being. This volition is 
the 'O Aoyog, Jesus Christ, the Word and Will of the 
Eternal. I must believe, accept, and confess Him as 
this, or my whole nature is out of harmony with the 
truth and order of God. I am, as stated, like a 
mote attempting rebellion against the universal law 
of gravitation. The revelation, ''the Word " addressed 
to me convulses my nature : it stirs something within 



CHRIST AND INFIDELITY, 229 

me of the existence of which I was not before aware ; 
it is like wakening a sleeping child from his bed. I 
do not know what that something is. It may be 
part of God : it may be my own fancy : it may be the 
devil. But when I have once heard that there is a 
future judgment, a hell, and that there is salvation 
from such hell in an Incarnate God, and that Jesus 
Christ is that God, the revolution in my being is half 
effected. Time, sickness, desertion, helplessness, 
hopelessness, will complete the subjugation. If you 
can once thus persuade me that Jesus Christ is the 
God who created, and now controls nature, you have 
me committed to the whole supernatural system of 
Christianity, with its priesthood as the ministry, and 
its services,* ordinances, sacraments, as the ritual and 
channels of Christ. 

Chr. How came — according to your ideas — the 
Incarnation of God in Christ to be the cardinal cre- 
dendum of Christianity ? 

Inf. I account for it thus : I consider the apostles 
the first intellects in spiritual conspiracy and manly 
fortitude that have ever existed. 

Chr. Some people think and talk of them as sim- 
ple fishermen of Galilee. 

Inf. They did nothing as fishermen ; whatever they 
did, mentally or spiritually, they did as apostles. I 
despise the people who talk of them as fishermen 
— poor fishermen — humble fishermen of Galilee. It 
is a false way of speaking of them — they ceased 
to be fishermen before they were ordained by Christ 
to be apostles. They first left all — tlieir secular 
occupation included — to follow Christ: not before 



230 CHRIST AND INFIDELITY. 

they had thus left all were they even received as 
disciples, much less commissioned with the aposto- 
late and priesthood of Christ. And so the orthodox 
Church, following them, as they professed to follow 
Christ, will not now permit any priest or minister of 
hers to engage himself in any secular trade, calling, 
or business. This is part of that profound traditionary 
policy which she has derived from the Twelve. The 
Roman Catholic Church carries it out to such ex- 
tremes as to reject every candidate for her priesthood 
who refuses to vow perpetual celibacy. Your own 
Church carries it out so far as to bind every candi- 
date for her ministry to perpetual abstinence from 
any professed worldly business. The difference be- 
tween you is one of degree only, not of principle — 
both of you derive it from the policy of the Apos- 
tolate. Fishermen, indeed ! Saul, in his time, was 
a greater emperor than Nero — so in the East was 
Peter. The truth is, the apostles were originally 
military fanatics of the deepest and most crimson 
grain, impregnated to their hearts' core with the 
fierce spirit which habitually made Galilee the 
focus of all the religious insurrections against the 
Gentile dominion of Rome. They represent them- 
selves as constantly inciting Jesus Christ to raise 
the standard of David, and proclaim the kingdom 
of Israel against the world in arms. And for this 
reason they are so punctilious in giving us a double 
genealogy of their leader, as uniting in his own per- 
son the double claims of law and of birth, to the 
rights and prerogatives of the house and lineage 
of David. It was in a military capacity they were 



THE APOSTOLIC FAITH AND INFIDELITY. 231 

prepared to follow Christ as a military Messiah ; they 
left the same spirit behind them among their coun- 
trymen in Galilee : it was Galilee that forty years 
afterw^ards rose against Rome, drew in the whole 
nation to rise with it, gave the rebellion its chiefs, 
and with all the mad dauntlessness of enthusiastic 
bigotry, fought the battle through till not one tribe 
was left of their race in Palestine, nor one stone upon 
another in Jerusalem. The apostles were men ex- 
actly of the same stamp ; but their leader, Christ, 
was one who opened vaster and nobler views of am- 
bition to them than the political command of a little 
oriental kingdom. He knew, however deeply fanati- 
cism had blinded their perceptions, that the physical 
empire of Rome could not be overthrown by any 
force the East could at that period bring into the field 
against it. Any pretensions, therefore, which He 
might advance to a military Messiahship would. He 
perceived — even if accepted by the Jewish nation — 
be instantly tested and exposed by the summary 
defeat of Himself and his undisciplined followers. 
He elected, therefore, to be a spiritual Messiah — to 
revolutionize the intellectual and religious, instead 
of the political world. His superior strength of mind, 
and the extraordinary moral intrepidity which He 
possessed, completely brought round the apostles to 
His own views and designs. He fell, as He antici- 
pated, the first martyr to His own cause ; but He left 
surviving a band of men, each of them fully capable 
of supplying his place, and executing with the most 
unflinching courage the instructions for the founda- 
tion of this mighty spiritual empire, antagonistic to 



232 THE APOSTOLIC FAITH AND INFIDELITY. 

all physical force or bodilj violence, wliicli He had 
bequeathed to them. They too, like Him, made up 
their minds to death in the cause : death came, but 
before it came they had firmly established such an 
empire, which they termed the Church, or the Gath- 
ering unto Christ — Ecclesia — in the very centre, and 
in every province of the old military domination 
which had so long swayed the earth. I thus, in the 
character of the apostles, sometimes seem to find the 
origin and success of Christianity explained. At 
other times I am more inclined to believe, with 
Strauss, that Jesus Christ never existed ; that He 
is simply a myth, imagined and elaborated by 
the apostles for their own purposes of spiritual su- 
premacy. 

Chk. Yes. Infidelity is a very Proteus as to what 
it does and does not believe about Christ. 

Inf. Be it so. I am an Infidel in the faith which 
the apostles taught, but I am an almost abject ad- 
mirer of the apostles themselves. 

Che. Yery singular again — that you should ad- 
mire men to whose words you attach no credence or 
respect. 

Inf. I admire the nerve and mental power with 
which, against enormous odds, they dared and 
achieved success. I can, therefore, go with a safe 
conscience to church on St. Peter's day. He was a 
hero : I venerate him as such, but I believe scarcely 
a sentence of what I hear in the church as attributed 
to St. Peter. The system they originated and taught 
was a pure illusion : Saul and Peter knew^ it to be 
so; but they also knew it to be just the illusion 
which human nature thirsted and craved after. They 



THE APOSTOLIC FAITH AND INFIDELITY. 233 

idealized a suffering God, and in a suffering world 
the invention was hailed with a holy enthusiasm. 
One took the East ; the other the West : both on the 
understanding that they were to meet at Rome, and 
by their deaths consignate and sanctify an eternal 
empire of persuasion and faith to mankind. The 
other apostles were subordinate to these two master- 
minds, but each and all possessed stainless honor 
towards each other, and invincible determination in 
the promotion of their common object. The parti- 
tion of the inhabited world among themselves was 
effected at Jerusalem ; each took possession of his 
own ; each could appeal to the other in defence and 
corroboration of the same principles : all supported 
and stood by each other's pretensions. Peter, a few 
days before his crucifixion at Rome, is heedful to 
write to the whole Oriental Church about " his be- 
loved brother Paul ;" and Paul, in return, in writing to 
the Hebrews, more especially under Peter's suprem- 
acy, is equally heedful in reminding them ''to obey 
them that have the rule over them, and to submit 
themselves." I revere such iron consistency of pur- 
pose, and unparalleled spirit in the founders of youF 
Church. They overthrew the old Pagan world — and 
on this fact alone they must have been men of the 
first calibre in intellect and resolution. 

Chr. And you believe they effected all this by 
their own power of mind alone? 

Inf. Yes. Why not ? Great minds do effect mir- 
acles, and revolutionize the feelings and convictions 
of nations. They despised death. They saw com- 
mon gladiators do so — half the Roman emperors 
also died violent deaths ; why should they, the spir- 



234 THE APOSTOLIC FAITH AND ESTFIDELITY. 

itual emperors, care to be exempt from it ? Had 
they betrayed any shrinking from it, what became 
of their glorious theory of the life after death, of 
eternal joys and immortal crowns, with the Lord 
of life and death, in the painless and sinless heav- 
ens? For them not to have welcomed death, was 
death to their spiritual supremacy over the souls 
of their subjects. When 1 reflect on the number 
of temples erected and dedicated in every civ- 
ilized country to the honor of these men, I am 
lost in amazement. ISTot one temple is there at 
this moment in all Europe dedicated to the gods of 
antiquity — not one to such conquerors as Alexander, 
Caesar, Trajan, the Antonines; but there are, prob- 
ably, in Christendom ten thousand temples conse- 
crated and called after the names of each of these 
apostles — one hundred thousand, perhaps, to the 
whole Apostolate. 

Chr. The Apostolate of a Christ who has never 
existed ! Really, the miracles Infidelity proposes to 
our belief far transcend those of Christianity. 

Inf. The more I consider this one fact, the higher 
rises my opinion of that intellect of the Twelve 
which laid the foundations of a spiritual empire 
resulting in this marvellous aggrandizement of the 
memory of its founders. A spiritual empire to which 
a hundred thousand temples pay daily tlie homage of 
matter in its highest forms of artistic beauty! Com- 
pared to an}^ one of these apostles, Mohammed display- 
ed no insight whatever into futurity. Mohammed- 
anism vanishes before civilization and pure woman- 
hood. The apostles guarded their religion against 



THE APOSTOLIC FAITH AND INFIDELITY. 235 

all hostile contingencies of this kind. They so de- 
vised it as to conciliate and to win over all future 
generations of women — the virtuous by its sanctity, 
the fallen by its mercy. They took care not to com- 
mit it to this or that system of science, philosophy, or 
political government, but so drew it up that it should 
still and forever seem to be above and in advance of 
them all. And, as you observe, many millions really 
believe and venture their salvation — which is much 
more than any temporal interest — on the truth of 
the system these apostles had the mind to poetize, 
and the courage successfully to propose as a new con- 
science to mankind. But of all their engines, this 
doctrine, that the Jesus Christ they preached was 
God Incarnate, was the most powerful in its opera- 
tions on the souls of men. Many councils were held 
before that was brought out in its present form. 

Chr. Well ; and how came they to adhere so in- 
flexibly to it — never in the least degree to modify or 
permit, in any of the Churches they founded, any 
modification of it by others ? 

Inf. How came they? The reason is evident. 
Unless Christ was God, what right had they to 
preach at all ? If Christ were mere man, what better 
was He than any other man, so far as authority to 
issue spiritual commission went? What authorita- 
tive commission to the soul of men could be issued, 
except from the Creator and Lord of the soul ? If 
Christ was not that Lord, this commission convicted 
itself of invalidity. As man merely. He was a cru- 
cified rebel. The nature of any commission, spiritual 
or secular, from such a character, would not have 



236 THE APOSTOLIC FAITH AND INTIDELITY. 

been admitted by the most ignorant Jew or heathen. 
The apostles were fully aware that, neither in 
themselves, nor yet in Christ, as mere man, could 
they have any such power as this. They there- 
fore constituted themselves '' ambassadors." From 
whom? From God. But Jupiter Tonans, God in 
thunder and force, had never touched suffering 
humanity ; it must be from God in suffering. "What 
suffering so acute, so ignominious, so recoiled from 
in shame and horror by all antiquity, as crucifixion? 
God Crucified became their authority. They came 
as ambassadors from a crucified God: far more — 
crucified in order to be the Saviour of sufferers. To 
such an appeal human nature succumbed. It only 
hardened and marbled itself against a force or ven- 
geance God ; but against God suffering its own worst 
pains and deprivations, to save it from an eternity 
of like pain and joylessness, it had no resistance to 
offer : the marble melted into tears ; it preferred 
worshipping the Cross to any throne in heaven or 
earth beside ; for the cross was itself ; Christ on the 
cross was its own suffering deified. All this was 
foreseen by the apostles. They knew the fatal defect 
which existed in all the religions of their time^ — 
especially in all the heathen mythologies. They 
invented a better mythology, and to give it a human 
heart, they concentrated all its teachings and appeals 
into Jesus Christ, as the God-sympathizer with, all 
suffering. Under Him they foresaw they themselves. 
His ambassadors, would inevitably become the Dii 
Minores of Christendom — of the new religious future. 
They are so become: and perhaps may remain so 



THE APOSTOLIC FAITH AND INFIDELITY. 237 

for another two thousand years. I affirm that such 
historical celebrities as Caesar, Charlemagne, Napo- 
leon, are only the empty bubbles of an hour when 
contrasted with such dynastic permanencies, such 
spiritual potentates, as the twelve " men of Galilee." 
Looking at the effects they have produced, w^e must 
pronounce their College a thing altogether unique in 
the world ; nothing in history resembles it or them. 
And as long as human nature remains what it is, 
they also will probably remain the kings and priests 
of soul. Are you surprised at this view of the apos- 
tolical founders of your Church ? 

Chr. Not at all — it is quite consistent with the 
hero-worship of modern Infidelity. 

Inf. In what respect ? 

Chr. In making "success" the test of heroism. 
You think the apostles consciously preached false- 
hood, but because the falsehood has met with un- 
paralleled " success," you admire them as " unparal- 
leled heroes" — quite unique — things by themselves 
in the world. 

Inf. I am speaking of their intellectual power. 

Chr. To which Moloch you appear, to me, to sac- 
rifice all claims on their part to moral integrity. 

Inf. Let me proceed. I account, in the second 
place, for this doctrine of the Incarnation being 
made the basis of Christianity, because no other 
doctrine is so well adapted to form the crown of that 
system of adulation of human nature, which in real- 
ity Christianity is. Do I now surprise you ? 

Chr. In no degree. It is only a new view of 
Christianity, and new views of Christianity are in 



238 THE APOSTOLIC FAITH AND INFIDELITY. 

these days as common as printing-presses. But I 
shall be obliged to you to explain yourself further. 

JjsT. It flatters me to be told that I have some- 
thing within me immortal ; that this " immortal" par- 
ticle is part of the Deity, and ought to be as pure 
as He ; that, polluted or unpolluted, death may affect 
its condition, but not its existence ; that if it does 
not live forever with God, its origin, it still will with 
Satan, its seducer. Thus even life with Satan is life 
forever : that is better than annihilation or nothing- 
ness. All this Christianity delivers ; and what is it 
all but the most superb but delicate flattery of human 
nature ? When I am told it, I am disposed to be- 
lieve it. My being in any way immortal exalts my 
view of myself. Presently I begin to see death in 
quite another light. Without Christianity I might 
- — as I stated — try to become a hero ; but supposing 
I succeeded in being so, it would only be, after a 
few years, a dead hero. With Christianity I, in one 
sense, die — in another, I conquer death. A hero can 
destroy life : so can a beast, a shark, a tiger, a nail, a 
drop of poison — the vilest thing in nature has such 
hero-power as this ; but a Christian destroys death. 
By becoming a Christian I am above all death-power 
in earth, heaven, or hell — for I become part of Him 
who is Life itself. What is all heroism in its results, 
compared to this completeness of a victory the effects 
of which are co-infinite with eternity ? Less than 
nothing. As long as God lives, I, being part of 
Him, must live also. As the suu gathers light unto 
itself, so He has, through Christ, gathered me unto 
Himself. No dream of poetry ever matched such a 



THE APOSTOLIC FAITH AND HSTFIDELITY. 239 

vision of immortality as Christianity thns presents 
to the eye of faith. But it is all an illusion : the 
vanity of human nature accepts the illusion as the 
most gratifying, the most intoxicating incense ever 
offered at its shrine — and thus Christianity is the 
adulation of man. 

Chr. If these statements of Christianity were true, 
then I presume you would, with us, admit it to be 
not the adulation but the exaltation of human nature. 
It is the truth or falsehood of these doctrines which, 
in their application, constitutes the difference be- 
tween adulation and exaltation. 

Inf. Yery true — and being, as I think, false, I 
apply to Christianity the term of systematic adula- 
tion. Seriously, do you believe me immortal? 

Chr. What do you believe yourself? 

Inf. I rarely think about it at all. I feel myself 
indifferent to immortality. I am more attached to 
my estate, my family, my horses, my pleasures, my 
political interests, than to any consideration of self- 
eternity. I do not wish for immortality. And yet I 
do not withhold the confession that the same Chris- 
tianity which flatters my vanity, terrifies my soul. 
If I thought God spoke to me individually, I know 
not what I should do. But the supposition is mon- 
strous. Suppose He did create nature: He leaves 
it, once made, to its own laws and properties : so He 
leaves us, once made, to the laws of our own nature. 
Not so, your Christianity exclaims : God no more 
leaves you, once created, to yourself, than you, a 
father, leave your child, once born, to itself. Thus 
you trouble me — whatever inorganic nature may be 



240 THE APOSTOLIC FAITH AND INFIDELITY. 

supposed to suggest, sensitive nature favors your 
comparison. " And God — Jesus Christ — is the Fa- 
ther of that soul within you which will not permit you 
to abandon to itself, in utter hopelessness, the child 
of your love. What you feel towards your child, God 
feels towards you — only you are more helpless to- 
wards heaven, your true home, than your little babe is 
towards this world, its temporary home." So far your 
faith is a species of profound courtiership towards 
the aristocratical weakness innate in man. But you 
proceed further, so as to change this aspect of kind- 
ness into one of terror — the very depth of the humil- 
iation of Christ infuses strange sensations of awe 
and fear into the soul. Who condescends ? Christ, 
the 'O Aoyog Himself, — the King of Angels, the 
Lord of Hosts, the Majesty of Heaven, the Fulness 
of Infinity, the Everlasting Father, the Disposer of 
the Destinies of Eternity ! And to whom ? To me. 
If I believed Him such, I w^ould prostrate myself as 
the threshold for His feet: my lowest submission 
would, in reality, be my highest elevation. Thus 
the apostles reasoned. Christ, once acknowledged as 
Creator, must be acknowledged also as the re-Creator. 
He that made the soul, can regenerate it : He that 
made the mind can purify, refine, enlarge, ennoble 
it : He that gave life to the dust, can give the body, 
so made out of the dust, everlasting life. What rea- 
soning can be more natural, more apt to take with 
the mass of mankind? The propositions seem so 
rational that it requires no small effort to refuse 
assent to them. To Jesus Christ, therefore, thus 
held forth as God, the application of the word 



THE APOSTOLIC FAITH AND INFIDELITY. 241 

" impossible " would be sheer nonsense. Thus, also, 
they evolved the principle of prayer. Is your heart 
wicked ? Have you passions you cannot yourself 
subdue? Have you a conscience uncleansed and 
self-accusing? Are you dead to heavenly-minded- 
ness ? Have you a desire, but no power for holiness? 
Pray to Christ : resign your soul to Him : confess to 
Him the consciousness of your wants and deficiencies : 
He is God, and can do all things : He is your Saviour, 
and will do all things for your salvation from sin, and 
your perfection to holiness. Granting the premises, 
what logic can be clearer or firmer than this? Each 
link still follows the last as a chain of pure reason. 
When God, in Christ, comes to me as a sufi'erer for 
my sake, what can be denied Him ? When I, a suf- 
ferer, go to God my Saviour, what will He deny me ? 
Genuine, unfeigned faith in this cardinal credendum 
— the Divinity of the crucified Saviour — carries with 
it, and works out all the rest of Christianity by its 
own power. Hence the apostles made it the '4'ock" 
of the faith : hence, though a man were moral, kind, 
generous, self-denying, pious, a Paul in the law, a 
Peter in the rigor of the circumcision, all short of 
the acceptance of this tenet, was cast aside, rejected, 
spurned. The point was, " Do you, in your heart, 
believe, and will you, before the world, confess that 
Jesus Christ, who suff*ered for you on the shameful 
cross, was the Son of the living God?" And from 
this point your orthodox Catholic Church has never 
shrunk or receded. People began to palter and say, 
" I believe Jesus Christ was the Son of God, in a 
certain sense." Forthwith the Church of the apos- 

11 



V* 242 THE APOSTOLIC FAITH AND ESTFEDELITY. 

ties, full of their spirit, and possessed of their hered- 
itary mind, instantly intensified her creed — '' God 
of God, Light of Light, Yery God of Yery God, be- 
gotten, not made, by whom all things were made." 
What strength of action ! what decision ! what con- 
tempt of conciliation ! what an uplifting of the ban- 
ner ! what a true appreciation of the impregnability 
of their spiritual position ! I admire, with all my 
soul, the stern, unyielding, obdurate orthodoxy that 
has thus for eighteen centuries battled with and con- 
quered reason, science, philosophy, kings, nations, 
governments. You may well call it "Apostolical" 
• — for orthodoxy breathes the very heart-breath of 
the apostles. Not a verse is there in their Epistles 
to the Church which does not glow with the fire of 
orthodoxy. " If there come any unto you, and bring 
not this doctrine, receive him not into your houses, 
neither bid him God speed." I am intellectual : I 
bow down to intellectual superiority — to nothing 
else. Apostolical orthodoxy is the most astounding 
triumph of far-seeing intellect over nature, mankind, 
coarse reasoning, and coarser violence, that the world 
has witnessed ; but then " The lie — ^^the lie of it, 
Horatio." 

Che. You admit that if Christ be God, Infidelity 
is not only the blackest sin of the soul against God, 
but is necessarily perdition. 

Inf. Yes. 

Chr. If Christ be not God, to what power do you 
attribute the success of Christianity ? 

Inf. To apostolic intellect. 

Che. Then what becomes of Infidel "intellect," 



THE APOSTOLIC FAITH AND INFIDELITY. 243 

which has thus everywhere succumbed to apostolic 
intellect ? 

Inf. The apostles themselves were infidels. Do 
you not understand? 

Chr. Pardon me — it is difficult. The apostles 
infidels ! 

Inf. Decidedly. An Infidel, in listening to their 
Scriptures, is often so perplexed as to how far he 
believes or disbelieves, that he retires upon this sup- 
position as the readiest solution which presents itself. 
He hears one verse, and exclaims, '' What an absurd- 
ity!" He hears another, and cries, ''How very 
true ! The very feeling I experience." He prefers, 
therefore, dealing en masse with the whole subject 
of the apostles and their Scriptures. He accepts the 
apostles as the clearest-minded impostors of any age 
or time. He repudiates the Scriptures, considering 
them the record agreed upon among themselves to 
be passed off upon the external world. Their ratio- 
cination was — '' Intellect will contemn the Scriptures, 
but it will bow down to the living confederacy of the 
Church. Simplicity will not understand the Church, 
but it will think it understands the Scriptures and 
will confide reverentially in them. The Church, 
therefore, for intellect — the Scriptures for honest 
and ignorant faith." 

Chr. But surely such a system as your vision thus 
conjures up from the realms of nonentity is long 
since defunct. 

Inf. Kot so. The Pope of Pome has, I believe, 
at this day in his possession at the Vatican, the 
scheme of Peter and Paul for the subjugation of 



2M THE APOSTOLIC FAITH AND INFIDELITY. 

both the intellect and principle of the worid. Has 
not the Czar the scheme of another Peter for the 
conquest of the West, by the union of force and 
policy ? Observe how the Papacy has carried the 
scheme out in the kingdoms which acknowledge its 
sway. See how your own Church has been pervaded 
by the same spirit. In despite of your sham humil- 
ity and toleration, if the Divinity of your founder be 
in the remotest degree called into question, such 
men as Clarke, Priestley, Newman, are ipso facto 
expelled and excommunicated. If Hoadly touches 
this '' apple of your eye," — though Hoadly be a 
Hanoverian bishop, — lo ! your lower House of Convo- 
cation will endure no trifling on this vital point from 
crown or bishop. It draws up articles of impeach- 
ment, and shows itself prepared to engage king, 
parliament, or people on this apostolical position. 
For which reason it has never since been permitted 
to transact ecclesiastical business. Thus the State 
of England thoroughly appreciates and guards against 
the development in action of your faith in Christ 
Jesus as God. This faith, once settled in you — not 
pretended, but forming the honest conviction of your 
conscience — you of the nineteenth century become, 
under its operation, as fanatic and insane as the 
mediaeval knights and Templars, who gave up land 
and life for the defence of the Holy Sepulchre. Am 
I not correct, then, in affirming that the apostles, in 
inventing the Divinity of Jesus Christ, forged the 
most invincible and burning bond that has ever 
chained or tired the human heart ? 

Chk. You desire to transfer the cause of the 



THE APOSTOLIC FAITH AKD INFIDELITY. 245 

success of Christianity, in its temporal and spiritual 
aspects, from the Divinity of Christ to the intellect- 
ualism of the apostles. I do not deny the massive 
intellect of the apostles. To speak of them as if 
they performed a single spiritual or authoritative 
act in their abandoned capacity of fishermen, is a 
ludicrous error. As apostles, commissioned with the 
gospel and power of Christ, not as fishermen, they 
overcame the heathen world. But as for the human 
heart, was that the objective matter the apostles 
worked upon ? 

Inf. Tes. 

Chr. By adulation ? 

Inf. Tes ; a superb, a Divine adulation. 

Chr. " Out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, 
murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, 
blasphemies."^ The works of the flesh are manifest, 
which are these : " Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, 
lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, 
emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, envyings, 
murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like : of 
the which I tell you before, as I have also told you 
in times past, that they which do such things shall 
not inherit the kingdom of God."^ Are these state- 
ments of Christ and St. Paul very flattering, think 
you, to the human heart ? Your Infidelity can cer- 
tainly, in this charge, claim the merit of novelty. 

Inf. But surely to affirm that I am an immortal 
soul is flattery. 

Chr. What ! flattery if it be a truth ? 

Inf. But it is not a truth, it is a sublime delusion ; 
1 Matt. XV. 19. 2 Gal. v. 19-21. 



246 THE APOSTOLIC FAITH AND INFIDELITY. 

and as the whole system of Christianity rests objec- 
tively on the presumed fact of this immortality of the 
soul, Christianity itself is equally a delusion. We 
have here again one of these statements of your faith 
which, from the very magnitude of their audacity, con- 
found the nerve of philosophy. Every day w^e see 
men buried and crumbling to dust. What avails it ? 
Every day Christianity, over the very dead dust it 
treads upon, sounds the same eternal defiance to our 
senses, " I am the resurrection and the life, whosoever 
believeth in me shall never die." And mankind per- 
mit their senses to be conquered ; they give in help- 
lessly : they pluck out their very eyes and give them 
to Christ. Of what use is it for reason, science, philos- 
ophy, to attempt to instruct or enlighten such crea- 
tures, such a race as this ? Every eflfort is confronted 
and baffled by this never-ceasing monotone of the 
Church. Deliver them from Rome, they fall into your 
power ; rescue them from you, they are captured by 
Dissent. You complain of want of " faith" in people. 
Why the amount and crass solidity of ''faith" in Eng- 
land, on the Continent, in the world, is greater than it 
is well possible to conceive. Land at Calais, travel 
on a thousand miles direct to Gibraltar or Sicily, 
through the countries of the faith of Rome. What 
they do not believe may be expressed more briefly 
than what they do believe, such is the vast length, 
depth, and breadth of this faith, from the infallibility 
of the Pope to the canonization of Germaine Cousin, 
the last goddess of the Roman Olympian Calendar. 
Return to our own country. You may, in many 
provincial towns, walk through the streets between 



THE APOSTOLIC FAITH AND INFIDELITY. 247 

tlie lioui's of eleven and one on the Sunday, and fail 
to meet a human being in them. Where are they ? 
In the churches and chapels, going through a worship 
entirely of ''Faith." The believing powers of man- 
kind are unfathomable and inexhaustible. Rome will 
never be able to invent what they will be found in- 
capable of believing. The experiment has been tried, 
and she knows she is far from having yet sounded 
the bottom of the faith-capacity in man. Prot- 
estants aver that if they could once bring them- 
selves to believe transubstantiation, they could easi- 
ly accept all the other dogmas of Rome. I, an 
Infidel, aver that if I could once believe the im- 
mortality of the soul, I could accept all the dogmas 
of all the sects of Christianity without further de- 
murrer. If I could once swallow the camel, why 
should I pause at the gnat ? Men die in millions : 
not one of these millions ever return. My senses 
prove as clearly to me the non-immortality of man, 
as the senses of Protestants prove to them the non- 
transubstantiation of the elements. But of what 
use are the senses against your faith ? Roman 
Catholic and Protestant alike absolutely annul their 
evidence. A Roman Catholic would deem it a sin of 
tiie deepest dye to believe his senses tha^ bread was 
bread, and wine wine, against the faith of His Church : 
a Protestant would deem it as great a sin to believe 
his senses that dust is dust, death death, mortality 
mortality, against the faith of his Church or sec\ 
The difterence here also, as in other respects to 
which we have referred, is really only one of degrees 
of faith ; the Protestant as truly, though not to the 



248 THE SOIJL ITS IMMORTALrrY. 

same extent, ignores his own senses as the Roman 
Catholic does. Persuade me to believe against my 
senses, against the senses of all mankind, which tes- 
tify to man's entire mortality — body and spirit — that 
he is immortal, and I shonld consider all other doc- 
trines of Rome or England as so many small gnats 
following after the camel. But you undertake to 
prove this immortality of the soul. 

Che. By no means. 

Inf. But you firmly believe it ? 

Che. Certainly. If I could prove or demonstrate 
it mathematically, it would be an article of science, 
not of faith. Christianity is not mathematics, bnt a 
faith : it is a thing between God and the soul, not 
between man's mind and matter. 

Inf. It ought to be founded on as clear and true 
propositions as mathematics are. 

Che. Why so it is, and on much truer proposi- 
tions. Compared to Christianity the whole science 
of mathematics is a system of logical illusions, hav- 
ing no further existence than the mind imagines for 
them. 

Inf. This is a stranger assertion than any I have 
yet heard, — Christianity truer than mathematics ! 

Che. The whole science of mathematics rests on 
its definition of a " point," And that definition is 
an immaterial nonentity which nowhere exists in 
nature. And the whole science bnilt upon it is as 
its foundation, the logical but baseless fabric of the 
mental vision. Conceded its postulates and axioms, 
you cannot withhold your consent from the infer- 
ences the mind evolves from tliem. But of these 



THE SOUL ITS IMMORTALITY. 249 

the axioms have only a mental existence, and the 
postulates are impossible of proof. Mathematics, in 
fact, are of all the arts and sciences, poetry not ex- 
cluded, the most merely mental and visionary. It 
is the science of logical sequences from imaginary 
premises. You, like other advocates of mathematics 
who quote them in an antagonistic spirit to Chris- 
tianity, confound the certainty of the mental deduc- 
tions from the premises with the supposed certainty 
of the premises themselves ; whereas, the premises, 
so far from having certainty of existence, have no 
existence at all ; for where will you find existent 
in matter or nature the mathematical line, " length 
without breadth?" The whole science is a pure 
mental conception, having no external existence. 
And if you j udge it by the facts of external existences, 
it is a pure illusion — a lie, as Carlyle would call it — 
from beginning to end. And yet you would compare 
this visionary logic of points and lines, which have no 
existence in nature, with Christianity, that science of 
the soul, founded on the greatest of all existences, 
God, — and proved to be the truth of God by more 
external as well as internal evidences than any 
man's mind can at one time command and contain. 
Mathematics constitute a valuable mental exercise, 
but it would be less irrational to compare fencing 
with health, than such an exercise with the life of 
the soul. But meanwhile, what is that soul that has 
thus power to evolve out of itself this and many other 
systems of erudition and science? 

Inf. Evolves out of itself ? 

Chr. Certainly ; for you will not, I suppose, deny 



250 . THE SOUL ITS IMMORTALITY. 

that the soul in man precedes knowledge of all kinds 
in man ; the whole science of logic was in the soul of 
Aristotle before that soul evolved and worked it out 
in external order and typing. The soul is the source 
and origin of all sciences. Supposing them to- 
morrow obliterated from the records of the world, 
one soul surviving would contain the germ of the re- 
generation of all of them. The soul has in itself the 
power of receiving the truth-impressions of the whole 
universe. The truth-impressions of the material 
world we call science ; the truth-impressions of the 
higher or spiritual world we call Christianity. The 
great blunder committed by Infidelity is, that ac- 
knowledging the lesser, it is blind to the greater 
order of facts. It acknowledges mathematics, but is 
blind to the soul in which alone mathematics exist ; 
it acknowledges nature, but is blind to the God in 
whom alone nature exists. 

Inf. But to predicate immortality of man is to ask 
belief in an idea controverted and falsified by the 
mortality of every man that dies. 

Chr. How so? How long is it since Adam lived 
in the flesh ? 

Inf. About five thousand eight hundred years. 

Chr. The life of Adam still lives in you ; it has 
never yet died ; nay, more, it not only lives, but it 
has propagated itself, life of life, in about eight hun- 
dred millions of present souls in the world. Here is 
a multifold duration of fifty-eight centuries for the 
principle of life in man. 

Inf. But that is not immortality. 

Chr. True: still less is it mortality. Every in- 



THK SOUL ITS IMMORTALITY. 251 

dividual in this chain is clearl^^ a partaker of that 
which, even in this world, so far as facts yield 
evidence, possesses the power of imperishable per- 
petuity. 

Inf. AVell, this imperishable power enters a cer- 
tain individual organization, animates it for seventy 
years; the organization dissolves into its primitive 
elements ; with that dissolution the individuality 
also dissolves : the power which animated it mingles 
again w^ith its own imperishable source, the pervad- 
ing Soul of the universe. 

Chr. Is that Power which thus animates the hu- 
man material organization above the effects of its 
dissolution, or not? Does it die with the dissolution 
of its form ? 

Inf. Ah ! but that is an awful mystery which none 
but Omnipotence itself can know^; I am speaking of 
the immortality of the individuality of man. Man 
is body as well as this soul ; if the soul-principle be 
immortal, that will not make man, as man, immortal. 
The body is the bubble on the ocean ; the soul is the 
ligh-t of heaven within that bubble : the bubble bursts 
and subsides into the ocean ; the light within by the 
veiy fact of that bursting is released and again 
united with the Universal Lio;ht — call it God or auo^ht 
you please. That Universal Light, and the Light w^iih- 
in the bubble as part of it, may be immortal, but the 
union of that individual bubble with that individual 
portion of the universal light is not immortal. Now 
you, in your Creed, hold the immortality of tlie in- 
dividual man, ''I believe in the resnri'ection of the 
body and the life everlasting." You hold, in fact. 



252 THE SOUL ITS IMMORTALITY. 

the individual identity of man to be eternal, leaving, 
as far as I understand your religion, the restoration 
of this identity to God. So that the immortality you 
teach is not simply an immortality of the soul-prin- 
ciple, but of the individual man himself in his present 
unity of that soul-principle v^ith an incarnate body. 
How can you ask me to believe in the immortality 
of that union which thousands of instances prove 
every day to be mortal ? 

Chr. You appear to grant the existence of an im- 
perishable principle in man ; but its material in- 
strumentalism once dissolved, you deny it can ever 
re-animate the same resuscitated instrumentalism 
again. The soul may be immortal, but its immor- 
tality does not necessarily imply the immortality of 
that union of itself with body which we call man. 

Inf. Just so. The Soul in man being a particle 
of the Soul of the Universe, may, as you observe, hold 
latent in itself the knowledge of the whole universe. 
All the science which accrues to it in its present 
bodily media of the senses may be received by it — 
however novel to the senses themselves — as only 
reminiscences of its past self. The novelties of the 
soul may be merely in the senses : when they are 
exhausted, the same soul departs to animate other 
existences, or it returns to the great body of soul 
which vivifies creation. To itself nothing is new. 
In man all knowledge appears to be nothing more 
than the evolution of the soul into its own pure origi- 
nal state : this effected, it casts off its skin, and re- 
joins the Parental Soul of the Universe. 
, Che. But this statement of yours is not Infidel- 



THE SOUL ITS IMMORTALITY. 253 

ity — it is that near approach to Christianity which, 
from the great Greek philosopher, we call Platonisni: 
and Platonism in this respect is " not far" from the 
truths of the kingdom of God. Do you deny the 
immortality of the soul itself? 

Inf. Infinite difficuhies embarrass that question. 
Something in man evidently is eternally restless with- 
in him. The peasant is not satisfied with attaining 
his farm, nor Alexander with attaining the world. 
Something does exist in man which matter cannot 
satisfy — all the conquest of matter by it is merely 
fuel to be consumed in a quenchless and insatiable 
flame. Then the men who listen to this God within 
themselves are the great characters of time and his- 
tory. Something, again, outside of the soul appears 
to consider it its child, and, on the soul despising 
all matter, and casting itself back from this tempo- 
rary exile and incarnation into its bosom, to impart 
its own omnipotence of power to it. I do not, there- 
fore, well see how I can deny immortality to some 
principle in man. Thus the very oldest man is 
always looking forward ; the centenarian will talk of 
w^hat he will do next year. Your clergy din into 
our ears our insensibility to our own mortality. I 
stated, every grave refutes the idea of man himself 
being immortal : yet when I see every man returning 
from that grave, and verily in his heart saying 
" Amen" to the words of the Church, " Whosoever 
believeth in me never dies," I am confronted by a 
greater fact in the soul of man than I meet in the 
grave. The soul of man is insensible to mortality : 
it does not appear to consider the mortality of the 



254 THE SOUL ITS IMMORTALITY. 

body to concern itself at all, and when Jesns Christ 
comes to it, saying, " I am the Life Eternal," it receives 
it as a matter-of-course truth ; Christ is the enun- 
ciation of itself. The contempt which many nations 
have felt a pride in manifesting for death never could 
have existed, except in the consciousness of possess- 
ing a deathless principle in themselves. Now the 
founder of your religion elicited and evolved this 
principle to a degree unparalleled before His time. 
Being an intellectual Infidel, I yet see many points 
in the character of Jesus Christ, which mere intel- 
lectualists have never had the courage to exemplify 
in their own career and actions. The man who pro- 
claimed, " The hairs of your head are numbered," — 
" Not a spari-ow falleth to the ground without my 
Father's will," opened a view never before imagined 
of what I may designate the minute, the microscopic 
omnipotence of God. But when he preached, " Fear 
not them which can destroy the body, but after that 
have no more that they can do ;" and consistently 
with His own preaching gave His body, without 
fear, to the cross, I at once perceive that it is not 
the doctrine only, but the profound faith of the man 
in His own doctrine — His exemplilying the faith of 
His own soul by offering Himself, His own body, in 
evidence of His own sincerity in that faith, — which 
convulsed, first the Jewish, then the lieathen reli- 
gions. I will not permit j^ou, therefore, to quote 
the sublime character and acts of Christ, as a verifi- 
cation for the truth of His doctrines. No man ever 
so much despised the conventionalities of His time : 
no man so dared to identify Himself with the outcasts 
of society : no man seemed to have His oracle of 



THE SOUL— ITS rsmORTALITY. 255 

action so completely within Himself: no man to look 
forward with a steadier eve to the Cross as the issue 
of His career. I admit all this. If, with Newman, 
I deprecated His moral, I feel it could only be to 
exalt His political character. In this man, therefore, 
there clearly existed some principle which enabled 
Him to feel Himself above mortality. What was 
that? You affirm Him to be God as well as man. 
In that case both the soul of man and the self- 
eternity of Deity were united in His person. But 
then comes also the consideration, what is that in 
man which God Himself underwent such humiliation 
to redeem ? Thus from Christ we are driven back 
to the consideration of something in man for which 
Christ averred He sacrificed Himself as Christ — His 
own union of God and matter. I am thus involved 
in inextricable perplexities — ^for this sacrifice of the 
mere body by this man, Christ, has been responded 
to for His sake bv thousands of others : somethinp; 
in them exists, similar to what existed in Him — and 
that I conclude to be the consciousness of deathless- 
ness. So far I might, perhaps, not disagree with 
Christianity ; but when you proceed to assert the 
doctrine of deathless individuality, and, as necessa- 
rily connected with it, the doctrine also of individual 
responsibility, I become again a complete and con- 
firmed Infidel. I will grant you the abstract truth 
of the immortality of the soul, provided you grant 
me the non-responsibility of the individual man. I 
will be content to admit the soul-principle in man to 
be immortal, if you will admit the identity of man — 
as soul and body — not to be immortal ! 

Chr. I perfectly understand you. You h :v'e no 



256 INDIYIDUAL IDENTITY OF MAN 

objection to Christianity merely as a philosophy, but 
you have the strongest objection to it reduced to ac- 
tion as a reality. The immortality of the soul is a 
grand doctrine : but the individual responsibility of 
the soul to God,— ah ! that is a frightful superstition! 
that you can never admit ! That is Christianity. Is 
it not so ? 

Inf. Yes ; it is so. 

Chr. The immortality of the soul would not, in 
fact, trouble you at all. The individuality of that 
immortality implies also the probability — nay, almost 
the certainty of future judgment. You here see 
how far beyond Platonism Christianity goes. Pla- 
tonism stops just short of the point where the im- 
mortality of the soul becomes a practical bearing 
upon man : Christianity takes it up at that point, 
proclaims that immortality to be an indivisible iden- 
tity, and presents it before the throne of God for 
judgment. 

Inf. And you go still further. The tenement now 
inhabited by the soul will, according to your Creed, 
be reorganized from the dust ; with it the soul will 
be clothed upon again — such union will reconstitute 
the identity of the man, and this union, this identity 
will never again be dissolved. Thus you teach, not 
the immortality of the soul only, but of man in his 
individual identity of soul and body united. This is 
the nature of the life everlasting as defined by Chris- 
tianity. You carry me thus, not in one part only, but 
in my whole, — " I," or " Ego," the indivisible self, — 
to render an account of my actions to God. It is 
not the souls of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob only, 



ITS IMMORTALITY. 257 

which are in the kingdom of heaven, but Abraham, 
Isaac, and Jacob themselves. It is not the soul of 
Christ which sits at the right hand of God, but the 
full identity of Christ Himself. The apostles, in this 
way, by making individual identity eternal, riveted 
a nail in the human soul of each individual, which, 
once driven home in early life, no power of philoso- 
phy or science can ever afterwards stir or extract. 
This doctrine, once admitted, that of amenability to 
God and judgment necessarily followed. Now with 
Platonism, or the philosophy which, teaching the im- 
mortality of the soul, rejects, or stops short of the 
immortality of the man-self, I have nothing to anti- 
cipate or apprehend hereafter. Let my soul be 
immortal, — it is a sublime doctrine : if that alone be 
immortal, then the " I," the " self," the identity, the 
man I now am, once dissolved, cannot be reidentified 
— consequently " I," as the man-self, can never be 
judged. This is an easy, consolatory philosophy, 
leaving us to do much as we please, without fear of 
future consequences. Yours is the very reverse : it 
disturbs and agitates a man's whole being, for it 
makes that whole being in its self-identity an immor- 
tal responsibility. Thus I again arrive at the vast 
superiority of the Apostolic over the Platonic intel- 
lect. Plato dreamed an Utopia which never could 
exist for his kingdom : the apostles have founded a 
Church, existent everywhere in despite of all the 
facts of mortality and sense, for their kingdom. But 
I do not, for all their success, believe their dogmas. 
I admire and appreciate their intellect, but I lepu- 
diate their faith. Why not, with the philosophy of 



258 INDIVIDUAL IDENTITY OF MAN 

Plato, be satisfied with the immortality of the soul 
alone ? 

Chr. We do not even proceed, as to the fact of the 
immortality of the soul, upon the same ground with 
philosophy. Supposing, for instance, the soul not 
previously to be immortal, we should still hold that 
the Word of Christ, addressed to and received by it, 
w^ould then and thereby make it immortal. Sup- 
posing it to have no immortality in itself, it has 
immortality in Christ. God is not the God of the 
dead, but of the living. " The gift of God is eternal 
life, through Jesus Christ our Lord," — these and 
similar emanations of the living Word to our souls, 
render, in our judgments, all philosophic discussion 
about the immortality of the soul unnecessary and 
superfluous. If the soul be immortal, what at first 
made it so ? The Word of God. Here in Christ, we 
have that very Word, both announcing and giving 
immortality to the soul. If philosophy could dem- 
onstrate the fact of its immortality, that immortal- 
ity could only have originated, and must be traced 
back to the power of the very same Word, the 
assurance of whom on the subject we have already 
revealed and pledged to us in the Scriptures. That 
Word is infinitely more satisfactoiy to us, than any in- 
ductions or imaginations of our own, wliicli we might 
be pleased to dignify with the title of philosophy. 
I do not, therefore, trouble myself as to whether my 
soul is by nature mortal or immortal. The Scrip- 
tures everywhere, expressly or inferentially, teach 
its immortality. If they did not do so, if it had not 
pleased God to have at first created it immortal, it 



ITS IMMORTALITY. 259 

pleases Him now to give it immortaLty. Practi- 
cally to me, as a believer in Christ, the question 
either way resolves itself into the same issue. By 
the power of the Word, either at my creation or my 
regeneration, I am an immortal soul. The question 
may not so resolve itself to a non-believer, or to one 
who has never received the power of the Word of 
God. They may be, I am not, personally interested 
in the native immortality of the soul. 

Inf. But, according to your Creed, the soul, or 
rather the identity of the wicked, is as eternal as 
that of the righteous. 

Chr. Certainly ; but were it not so, the fact would 
in no way affect my own immortality as received 
from the Word of God. Let them be mortal to 
whom the Word has not come, or who have rejected 
the Word ; I, to whom it has come, and by whom it 
has been received, am immortal. The negation of 
immortality in them in no way annuls its reality as 
the gift of God in Christ to me. If it pleases God 
to make a distinction between us, it is no more than 
an extension of the distinction He has in many ante- 
cedent, though inferior respects, already made be- 
tween man and man, between man and the beasts. 
My salvation is secured. It is for the infidel and 
the wicked to reflect whether the nature of the soul 
itself already renders it an impossibility or not for it 
to escape coming, some time or other, face to face 
w^ith God. If it be by nature immortal, it must, 
some time or other in the cycles of eternity, have to 
do with God — with the Word of God. Why, then, not 
cast itself now upon Him as Christ, its refuge and its 



260 THE SOUL ITS IMMORTALITY. 

Saviour? Seeing it must some time or other come 
to God, wherefore not now, when God calls it — calls 
it in loving-kindness and mercy ? 

Inf. But mark ! Christ comes to me ; I reject 
Him. If my soul were not before immortal, His 
coming perhaps gives it immortality, only it is an 
immortality for pain and evil. Before He came, 
temporal penalties sufficed for the degree of sin com- 
mitted; the man, therefore, himself was, perhaps, 
mortal, not an immortality. But now God in Christ 
has come, the sin of rejecting Him can only be ad- 
equately punished by adding the curse of immortal- 
ity to the sinning soul, — in other words, all other 
sins than the rejection of Christ have only temporal 
penalties, as in the old law, attached to them. But 
the rejection of Christ Himself, being as we observed 
something different in its very kind and nature from 
all sin as mere infractions of law, has an eternal 
penalty attached to it. His very coming, therefore, 
to the wicked, may create and leave upon them that 
capability of eternal sufferance which did not before 
exist. Breaking God's law is clearly a venial offence 
compared with rejecting God Himself: the one, God 
can and does readily forgive ; the other seems to 
bring upon itself an eternizing of its own evil, for in 
rejecting God we reject also all that God alone can 
do for us. The coming of the living Word upon the 
soul, therefore, would, according to one view of your 
religion, be of itself creative to it of immortality ; 
but whether that immortality so created would be 
one of misery or bliss, would depend entirely on the 
soul's acceptance or non-acceptance of Him as the 



CHRISTIANITY AND SYSTEMS OF PHILOSOPHY. 261 

Son of the living God. Thus your faith is wholly 
independent of the question of the native immor- 
tality of the soul. Christ carries with Him, to whom- 
soever He comes, immortality ; no soul to whom He 
comes has the option of remaining luortal, supposing 
it to be so by nature : all the option it has is an im- 
mortality in heaven or hell ; this, I conceive, is what 
Paul meant in stating the Gospel to be either life to 
life, or death to death. Observe the profoundne-ss 
of the Apostolic sagacity here again : they say noth- 
ing to this or that school of philosophy about the 
native immortality of the soul ; they do not trouble 
themselves about it; if immortal, and believed so, 
well and good ; half their work of conversion is al- 
ready effected. If not immortal, they will make it 
so ; the only Being by whom it could be, originally 
or now, immortal, is made to come by them in His 
Power upon it ; that mortality of the soul on which 
an Infidel might throw himself, and defy eternity, is, 
by this act of Christ, made to him an impossibility ; 
his strongest fortress becomes his dungeon ; that 
whereby he trusted to escape God, becomes, by this 
"Word of Power, the very thing that delivers him up 
for eternal judgment to God. It is no wonder the 
mass of mankind cannot compete with a system con- 
structed at all points with such extraordinary sub- 
tlety and prevision as this. It foresees and guards 
against every weakness of w^hich philosophy was 
ever guilty, yet it commits itself to no philosophy 
whatever ; it speaks of it in terms of scorn and con- 
tempt ; it presumes to have within itself, independent 
of all nature and all philosophy, a power to change 



262 CHRISTIANITY AND PATKIARCHAL FAITH 

at its touch the corruption of the grave into the in- 
consumability of hell — the perishableness of man into 
the glory and immortality of God. The very vast- 
ness of its claims cows and overpowers all ordinary 
minds ; the wonderful forethought which presided 
over its birth and constitution, renders it most diffi- 
cult to advance any objections against it with such 
effect as to liberate such minds from the fear and 
thraldom it imposes upon them. It persuades them 
that its Head, Jesus Christ, has power at pleasure to 
change mortality into immortality, and immortality 
into heaven or hell. Men say, " Possibly it is true — 
possibly ; at any rate, 'tis best to be on the safe 
side ;" so they become Christians. The wisdom of the 
Church in thus never relaxing her faith in Christ as 
God, is virtually justified by all such characters be- 
coming her children, by the very success of the system 
of which the Divinity of Christ is both the foundation 
and the keystone. But you affirmed the Scriptures 
everywhere expressly or inferentially teach the im- 
mortality of the soul ; is the correctness of your as- 
sertion so certain in regard to the Old Testament? 

Chr. Permit me to read in reply the following pas- 
sage on the subject. 

" In what sense did Adam understand the prom- 
ise of restoration in the woman's seed, or what 
sense had it at all, except on the pre-understood 
fact of the immortality of his own and his chil- 
dren's souls ? What consolation to a creature 
merely mortal would the assurance convey that, after 
he had ceased to exist, the serpent's power would 
be destroyed, and only the body of man suffer the 



THEIR IDENTITY. 263 

consequences of sin ? If the body were the whole of 
man, such a promise would be valueless both in future 
to Adam, and after his departure in prcesenti to his 
sons ; for in such case, to Adam there would be no 
future, and to his sons as to Himself the ' bruising 
of the heel,' the extinction of the body, would be 
total extinction. In what sense, again, could the 
Patriarchs understand the promises connected w^ith a 
futurity, except on the same pre-understanding of 
their own existence in futurity ? Otherwise, of what 
advantage would the verification of God's promise be 
to them personally, or w^iat present consolation and 
support could their faith with reference to its future 
realization afford? Did Balaam, again, fully under- 
stand the meaning of the parable put into his mouth 
by the Almighty ? Was he conscious of the literal 
truth of the words, ' I shall see him, but not now ; I 
shall behold him, but not nigh V Either he did, and 
therefore like ourselves knew the immortality of the 
soul ; or the Scriptures are a series of truths, intel- 
ligible each in its own appointed time, not absolutely 
at once, but in the period and with the circumstances 
previously appointed of God. Both may be true. 
Could Job, again, except under the same conviction 
of immortality, assert, ' In my flesh shall I see God ; 
whom I shall see for myself and mine eyes shall be- 
hold, and not another?' The Psalms. and the proph- 
ets abound with express declarations of the eternal 
existence of the ' inward man.' In captivity Daniel 
could not have received such a plain declaration as 
the following, without knowing, as we do, the soul's 
immortality : ' Many of them that sleep in the dust 



264 CHRISTIANITY AND PATRIARCHAL FAITH 

of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, 
and some to shame and everlasting contempt. And 
they that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the 
firmament, and thej that turn many to righteousness 
as the stars for ever and ever.' ' Go thou thy way 
till the end be : for thou shalt rest and stand in thy 
lot at the end of the days.' There are again innu- 
merable passages, dispersed through the Old Testa- 
ment, inexplicable, except as addressed to persons as 
well assured of their own immortality as they were 
of the existence of God. What signification can be 
attached to such prophecies as this, similar ones to 
which occur in almost every chapter of the evan- 
gelical prophets: 'Rejoice greatly, O daughter of 
Zion ; shout, O daughter of Jerusalem ; behold thy 
king Cometh unto thee : he is just and having salva- 
tion. As for thee also (addressing the king), I have 
sent forth thy prisoners out of the pit where is no 
water,' — except on the pre-acknowledgment of the 
soul's immortality ? Two consequences follow : the 
first, that this immortality, being the basis on which 
God acted on the souls of men under the law and the 
prophets, was placed in its full and true light by our 
blessed Lord; He alone is our Immortality in the 
sense in which God gave the promises to the Fathers. 
As He existed before the foundations of the world, 
so in Him existed the soul's immortality, restored 
to its original state of union with God. That the 
patriarchs knew the fact of their immortality, and 
constantly anticipated a return from the world of 
their fall to the first home of the soul, is, as St. 
Paul shows, clear from their faith and lives, neither 



THEIR IDENTITY. 265 

of which, except on this ground, admit of explana- 
tion. It is quite consistent with this conviction 
that they sliould remain ignorant of the definite 
nature of that immortality, of the very way of their 
restoration, of the exact fulfilment by which the 
Almighty would again open to them the gates of 
heaven. They l3elieved God upon the fact itself ; 
that belief being implicit, a belief also in God's own 
appointed w^ay of salvation was the righteousness of 
faith in Christ which became to them salvation. By 
this faith they were justified. The promise was ex- 
plicit ; the mode of its realization God reserved to 
Himself; into this mode the fathers inquired not, 
'for who by searching can find out God?' They lived 
and died in full faith that they should see the day of 
salvation, leaving, in the same full faith, the way 
and the means to the truth and omnipotence of God. 
Our Lord tells us such was Abraham's faith, ' Your 
father rejoiced that he should see my day: and he 
has seen it, and is glad.' I do not afiirm that the 
fact of their redemption being definite to the fathers 
of the patriarchal and legal Church, its manner in- 
definite, that this indefiniteness was not gradually 
so taken away by the Almighty before the advent 
of His Son that the scheme itself of salvation was 
revealed to the Church, and the circumstances of our 
Saviour's personal Incarnation and life ' in the flesh' 
shadowed forth in strong outlines. Admitting this, 
still its recognition or understanding was no neces- 
sary part of the saving faith of the patriarchs : tliey 
might remain willingly in the dark as to God's 

means, provided they were in the light as to God's 

12 



266 CHRISTIANITY AND PATRIARCHAL FAITH 

promise and intention ; the on was theirs, the tto)^ was 
God's. Christianity, therefore, labors under no 
necessity to demonstrate that the patriarchs and 
prophets understood the particulars of the mode of 
their redemption by a future Saviour ; it is sufficient 
to prove them ' partakers of the same faith with our- 
selves,' if it is plainly shown that belief in such a re- 
demption, involving in it a necessary pre-understand- 
ing of the immortality of the soul, constituted their 
creed of action and the ground of their acceptance 
with God. The second admission is this, — that so far 
as the mode of atonement w^as concerned, the very 
people themselves to whom the Scriptures were 
delivered, remained, with the Scriptures in their 
hands, ignorant as the Gentiles themselves, until the 
atonement itself was effected. To the Jews the 
Scriptures never did, and at this moment do not, 
explain themselves among them ; the Scriptures 
were daily read and sabbatically expounded, but in 
the very point for which all Scripture was inspired — 
the Incarnation of the Son of God — they were to the 
Jew a blank, as much a vacancy as nature is to 
sightless eyes. The question between the Jew and the 
Christian is yet, in a mental sense, ' Which under- 
stands the Scripture aright V If the Scripture is 
self-explanatory, how come the Jews to persist now 
as ever in an interpretation spiritually and de facto 
of the Messianic kingdom repugnant to the interpre- 
tation received among Christians ? The apostles, 
speaking of the time before the descent of the Holy 
Ghost, frequently admit that they understood not 
the Scriptures : neither before his conversion could 



THEIR IDENTITY. 267 

St. Paul have understood them, for he persecuted 
Him through whom they were given on conscientious 
principles. What then? The Scriptures were not 
understood before the Incarnation of our Saviour; 
His teaching constituted the revelation of the Scrip- 
tures ; the fulfilment of God's promise became de- 
finitively its explanation. The children of Abra- 
ham's faith receive, the children of Abraham's loins 
reject, the Scriptures : for it is all one whether a man 
reject the Scriptures in themselves or in their true 
acceptation. Can any reverence for the Scriptures 
exceed that of the Jews for them ? Can any igno- 
rance of what those Scriptures really mean exceed 
theirs ? The deduction is this, — that the Scriptures 
being one in their own truth and intelligibility, are 
not one, nor were ever intended to be one, as far as 
regards being completely understood, or forming a 
subjective integrity of intellect in the minds of those 
receiving them ; they open as the seasons of God re- 
quire them to open to men's minds ; they are co- 
ordinates with His purposes. Christianity is in the 
Old Testament : the Jews under the Old Testament 
neither saw nor acknowledged it, though the ' Israel 
of God' among them were even then Christians in- 
deed in faith and works ; they looked to and acted 
upon the promises ; but neither did these, though 
prophets and kings in the ancient Church, see in the 
Scriptures what we see. It was not the purpose of 
God they should ; doubtless they see them now : in 
paradise they understand them and rejoice, but then 
they were to remain under Moses the servant, and 
not immediately under Christ the Son. Adam un- 



268 CHRISTIANITY AND PATRIARCHAL FAITH 

derstood no more of his restoration to come than 
what God then and there revealed ; as the times of 
God proceeded so the revelations of God opened to, 
and were delivered to the times, constantly withal 
with greater clearness defining the futm-e redemp- 
tion, until the fulness of the times and the Scriptures 
were united in the Incarnation. Whatev^er, there- 
fore, the amount of knowledge possessed by the 
patriarchs and prophets ' of the things pertaining to 
the kingdom of heaven' might have been, their faith, 
so far as God required it, was right and saving faith ; 
wherefore, as the Church of England declares, they 
are not to be heard which feign that the old fathers 
did look only for transitory promises. Our knowl- 
edge of Scripture is to be fulfilled in God's own 
times ; we err as much by affectation of knowledge 
as by feebleness of faith : what in real knowledge 
of spiritual truths the Church militant is now to the 
Church in the desert, the Church triumphant will 
be to the Church militant. Compared to the former 
we are in light ; compared to the Church in heaven 
we are still in the ' shadows of things to come :' we 
see only in part, we know only in part. If the 
Jews had attempted to penetrate or to explain the 
means by which the Almighty miraculously gov- 
erned them and their fathers, could they by any 
possibility have succeeded ? Do they now, rejecting 
Christ, succeed with any other than their own race 
in assigning meaning or purpose to the ordinances of 
their divinely-given religion ? Did Abraham under- 
stand the real meaning of circumcision? or his chil- 
dren of those hosts of significant types, each of which 



THEIR IDENTITY. 269 

to US is as plainly indicative of the God-man as the 
sun's reflection in water is of the very sun in heaven ? 
or to sum up all, how, before the prophecies were 
accomplished by omnipotent acts, could any human 
mind, Jew or Gentile, explain such words as ' a 
virgin shall conceive and bear a child ;' or, ' for us 
a child is born ;' and this child • The Mighty God, 
the Everlasting Father ;' or, 'Aw^ake, O sword, against 
my shepherd, against the man that is my fellow, 
saith the Lord of hosts ;' or continuous passages of 
Isaiah, in which, to human knowledge and human 
ideas of the possible and impossible, the contradic- 
tions seemed as flat and palpable as words designed- 
ly could represent them ? Even as to the temporal 
effects of the advent of Christ, the Holy Spirit de- 
clared such things as at the time of their delivery 
seemed totally irreconcilable with each other and 
themselves, for example :—' Thus saith the Lord, the 
Redeemer of Israel, and his Holy One, to him whom 
man despiseth, to him whom the nation abhorreth, to 
a servant of rulers. Kings shall see and arise, princes 
also shall w^orship. I will lift up my hand to the 
Gentiles, and set up my standard to the people : and 
they shall bring thy sons in their arms, and thy 
daughters shall be carried upon their shoulders. And 
kings shall be thy nursing fathers, and their queens 
thy nursing mothers : they shall bow down to thee 
with their face towards the earth, and lick up the 
dust of thy feet !' To the Church of that time these 
prophecies were both above and against what ap- 
peared the surest reason, for how could a virgin con- 
ceive ? How could a child now first born into the 



270 CHRISTIANITY AND PATRIARCHAL FAITH 

world be The Mighty God, the everlasting Father? 
How could there be any fellow or equal to God? and 
yet more, how could ' the equal with God' suffer 
death? or how could He whom man despiseth, and 
the nation abhorreth, be at the same time One whom 
the kings and princes of the world should worship, 
and to whom the Gentiles should bring their sons 
and their daughters ? These things were confessedly 
contradictions and impossibilities to the reason of 
man. Did God require the Church to understand, 
or only to believe them ? Only to believe. We now 
see that such belief was the highest reason: these 
contradictions and impossibilities have, in the Incar- 
nation of God in Christ, received the simplest pos- 
sible solution. The mystery of the fact remains, but 
the solution by this one fact of what before were 
mysteries both irreconcilable with each other and 
with human reason, teaches us the folly of bringing 
any one of God's revealed truths to the test of possi- 
bility by our present state of knowledge or criterion 
of powers. ' Has God revealed it thus ?' is the ter- 
minus of our present right of inquiry. If the answer 
be ' Yes,' our firm faith in such revelation will cer- 
tainly in the end prove the only true wisdom. The 
whole Bible, indeed, in one sense, consists of revela- 
tions as much above reason as reason can conceive : 
as much against apparent reason as the immobility 
of the sun is apparently against the evidence of the 
senses. The Catholic Church, like the Jewish Church, 
but in a more heavenly and spiritual degree, is sub- 
jected by the Almighty to the same trial by faith ; 
but instead of the thousand mysteries significant ol. 



THEIR IDENTITY. 271 

and only explicable by, the Incarnation of God in 
Christ ' which should come,' her mysteries are 
founded upon the fact of the Incarnation accom- 
plished, and are only so far mysteries as that In- 
carnation itself is ; yet they are mysteries of the 
highest faith. Who, more than the Jew of old un- 
derstood the then declaration of God to His Church, 
can now understand the equally plain declarations 
of God to the Church after the Incarnation ? God 
is incarnate in our bodies, in our spirits, in His 
Church. How can it be? God reveals that it is 
so : the Scriptures have indeed been w^ritten for us 
in vain if we believe them not. God the Father, 
the Son, the Spirit, comes to us in baptism, abides 
on us in the Eucharist, unites Himself with our 
soul, and yet the Holy Spirit intercedes from with- 
in our soul, the Saviour presents, and the Father 
receives that intercession in heaven. How can 
these things be ? ' Believe them and thou shalt 
be saved.' I see bread and wine on the table of the 
Lord : they are consecrated ; they become verily and 
indeed to tlie faithful — as our own sinful bodies do 
after the consecration in baptism — the body and 
blood of Jesus Christ our Lord. How can that be, 
seeing they appear still bread and wine ? I know 
not more than I know how God was made flesh, how 
the dust was made man, or how^ man shall hereafter 
be ' the partaker of the divine nature.' God has so 
declared, I so believe, and I doubt not my belief is 
the highest reason. There is a judgment to come, in 
which God will judge the w^orld by the man Jesus 
Christ whom He hath appointed. How can that be 



272 CHRISTIANITY AND PATRIARCHAL FAITH. 

when he was despised, crucified, and rejected of 
men? I know not more than I know how, or by 
what mysterious power, He has become ' the light of 
the Gentiles, and the ends of the earth bow down to 
Him.' There is a resurrection of the body and a life 
everlasting. How can these things be, seeing the 
body becomes dust, and organic life dies with it ? I 
know not more than how the first man became life, or 
how that life has been propagated for five thousand 
years, or how the Spirit of God creates out of nothing, 
or recreates a soul from its fall. How these things 
are is very plain to God. That they are as He has 
declared them to be, I should be either infatuated by 
sin, or blinded by Satan, not to believe. As He was 
in the Church of old, till He was revealed in Christ, 
past finding out, so in the Catholic mysteries of 
Christianity does He, in a more heavenly way, hide 
Himself until ' the restitution of all things, when we 
shall know even as we are known.' Meanwhile, 
like the Father of the faithful, we live by faith, not 
by vision, having this certainty within ourselves 
that every article of our faith will, in God's good 
time, be found an everlasting verity. Between the 
patriarchs and ourselves the degrees of faith are 
various, but the faith itself is one, as the recompense 
of the reward is one. ' Many shall come from the 
east and the west, from the north and the south, 
and shall sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and 
Jacob, in the kingdom of heaven.' "^ 

Inf. In fact, it would make little difference whether 

^ Verities of the Church. 8vo. Rivingtons. 



DEATH ^WHAT IS IT? 273 

the immortality of the soul pervaded the old dis- 
pensation or not ; it is one of the fundamental tenets 
of Christianity, and to be a Christian, a man must 
accept it with all its consequences. Let us view the 
doctrine from another position. You attribute such 
a soul, without exception or discrimination, to every 
human being. 

Chr. Certainly. 

Inf. No matter where, when, or how ; from parents 
of the most eminent or the most infamous character, 
under what sanctities or what orgies the human 
being is conceived and born, such a soul is its " Ego" 
within — it can neither die, nor be less than this 
" Ego" forever. 

Chr. And what then ? 

Inf. By this creed death is a misnomer — to man 
it does not exist. No man ever has died ; none 
ever will die ; none can die. Death, so called, is a 
transition, not a destruction. Man no more dies 
than the sun ceases to be, because at one hour it 
flames in the East, at another in the meridian South ; 
because it now glares red and portentous in the 
atmosphere of the pestilence, now beams with lus- 
trous purity in the heavens of serenity and health. 
The medium and locality are changed, but it is still 
the sun. 

Chr. Continue. 

Inf. I say the doctrine which such a metaphor 
illustrates cannot be true : human nature itself re- 
futes it. Who can believe such nameless wretches 
as he sees, for instance, in the alleys of manufactur- 
ing towns, withered, haggard, black with grime and 

12* 



274 THE LIFE-WORD OF GOD 

dirt, woofs, living woofs of filth and drunkenness, to 
be immortal souls ? 

Chr. By your own comparison one might believe 
it. Their bodies would be the atmosphere of the pes- 
tilence round a benighted orb of light, the soul. Let 
us go to an extreme instance : let us take an hered- 
itary savage of the lowest grade, and put him by 
the side of Alexander, of Homer, of Fenelon, of 
Pearson, of Shakspeare : his soul is as immortal as 
tlieirs : neither can die. It is undeveloped, it scarcely 
glitters : nevertheless the minutest and most form- 
less particle of diamond dust is not less diamond 
than the Koh-i-noor. The Zoolu savage is not less 
an immortality than Milton ; only in him the death- 
less principle is deeply earthed where the light of 
God has not yet flashed upon it : but let that light 
flash, the soul of the savage will respond to its 
action with as true, if not as brilliant scintillations, 
as the soul of a Milton. Again, I will put' this 
savage by the side of the Belvidere Apollo. What 
object can to the senses present a contrast more in 
favor of the statue against the human being? From 
the former we recoil, from the latter we drink iu an 
intoxicating stream of artistic inspiration ; from the 
former we avert our glance with pity and disgust, 
on the latter we could gaze with conscious rapture 
till the fountains of light and the faculties of admi- 
ration were alike exhausted. Nevertheless there is 
that within the savage which is not within the 
Apollo ; there is that within the savage capable of 
making him the sculptor of a thousand Apollos, and 
of treading them when made, as nothing better than 



IS THK SOCL-LTFE OF MAN. 275 

the work of his own hands, beneath his feet. He 
possesses, how^ever dormant or torpified, a soul — 
therefore soul-sensitiveness to impressions and pas- 
sions produced by higher agencies than matter. Now 
in attempting the elevation of this savage to Chris- 
tianity, we proceed on this Article of our Faith that 
he, equally with any pope, bishop, or king, possesses 
a soul, possesses soul-sensitiveness to the things of 
God and the Spirit. On testing our faith, we find it 
true : he does possess a soul, he shows himself sen- 
sitive to God. Did he not, we might as well essay 
the conversion of the marble Apollo or a Brahmin 
bull. 

Inf. But such sensitiveness is so feeble, that its 
pulsations can scarcely be detected. 

Chr. Be it so. It may be quite a dead soul, with 
no pulsations at all ; as dead in its tenement of flesh, 
as the body is in the leaden cerements of the grave. 
It is still a soul, though dead: the Word of God 
passes and speaks to it : it receives life : it breathes : 
it rises from the tomb of corruption and sin : it 
stands erect in a new^ world of light and glorious 
creations : its eyes are opened to God and to heaven : 
the new life of the Word bounds in its veins, and the 
assurance of eternity glows in the brow of the second 
Adam from the dust — the savage has become a Chris- 
tian. 

Inf. But this is a miracle. 

Chr. True. The perpetual miracle of the Church : 
without such she never yet converted a soul to Christ 
— every Christian sustained, or heathen evangelized, 
is a standing miracle. Within that soul, so dead. 



276 GOD THK HOLY GHOST. 

there must descend a Presence from God, as real as 
the light of the sun within the walls of a room, the 
image of a father in the pupil of the eye of the child 
before the child can see its father, — as real as the 
arm of Christ raising the damsel of Jairus from her 
bed. This Presence can only be God Himself : for 
it is everywhere wherever the soul of man turns to 
God : it is ubiquitous : it is the promised Presence of 
Christ with His Church, and every soul converted 
is a demonstration that such Presence is a living 
Power and an endless fact. Without it the Church 
would long ago have perished from the face of the 
earth. 

Inf. You thus cite every convert as both evidence 
of the existence of a soul in man responsive to God, 
and of the perpetual Presence of Christ with the 
Church in bringing such soul to God. Behold again 
another result of apostolical sagacity — their system 
sweeps the New Zealander and the Caffre, as well as 
the Platonist and the Stoic, within its net. JSTo 
human being escapes its meshes : every human being 
converted it builds as a fresh living stone into its 
bulwarks and defences ; autocrat and serf it chal- 
lenges as equally its mission, and, like the enchant- 
resses of Tasso and Spenser, it gathers the most 
antagonistic natures, the lion and the lamb, the bear 
and the ox, the babe and the cockatrice to play at 
its feet. I thus candidly admit the catholicity of 
the apostolic genius : it fathomed the naked barba- 
rian in the wild as successfully as the jewelled empress 
on her throne : it hit upon that feeling in human 
nature which, in the desert or court, equally re- 



GOD — THE HOLY GHOST. 277 

sponcled to the universal hand which touched its 
chord — the hope of eternity, the satisfaction of an 
immortal pride. ^.^-.^...-^'Vx^ ^P^ 

Let us proceed to another topic intimately con- 
nected with this last article of my Infidelity. I 
mean Inspiration. You hold, it appears to me, 
Christianity in man to be a perpetual inspiration ? 

Chr. Christ in a Christian is a perj)etual inspira- 
tion. Christ is both body and spirit : to be a Chris- 
tian we must not only be of His body the Church, 
but His Spirit also must in that body work in us as 
life works in the members of a man : sending blood 
to its veins, vitality to its flesh, sensibility to its 
nerves, motion and action to its very bone and sinew. 

Inf. And this Spirit of Christ you term " the Holy 
Ghost," its operation you term inspiration. It in- 
spired the prophets of old in knowledge : it inspires 
you in grace : it sanctifies all the elect of God : it 
is diametrically opposed to the Evil Spirit : it is the 
Lord and Giver of life : one with God, one with 
Christ. Now I cannot believe in the existence of 
either this Holy Spirit, or of its contrary Evil Spirit 
— nor, of course, in any operation of either on the 
human mind or soul. 

Chr. Let us examine if such disbelief is consistent 
with facts and reason or not. You find, I presume, in 
your own mind, contrary and repugnant inclinations. 
Of two contraries, both cannot be right. For in- 
stance, you swear : one principle of your mind causes 
such swearing to be a relief to anger, ill-temper, 
acerbity ; another principle causes you to feel certain 
compunctions at prostituting — if there be such a 



278 GOT) THE HOLY GHOST. 

thing as holiness — the most holy of names to a mo- 
mentary ebullition of human frailty or fury. 

Inf. Proceed. 

Chr. Or again. You have fifty pounds to spare. 
One principle induces you to expend it in considerate 
charity : in saving some distressed family from desti- 
tution, aiding some struggling young man to secure 
an independency in the world, or educating a few poor 
and destitute children. The other principle bids you 
lavish it entirely on yourself. " Indulge genio," eat, 
drink, enjoy yourself; gratify your personal vanity, 
your own ease, your own passions. What are others 
to you? Consult only your own pleasures. These 
are contrary inclinations. 

Inf. Confessedly. 

Chr. Which is the good, which is the evil inclina- 
tion ? 

Inf. Neither of them absolutel}^ ; it depends on 
circumstances, sometimes one, sometimes the other. 
Charity is good, self-indulgence is good : carried to 
extremes both may be evil — both self-ruinous. 

Chr. Not so. Good can never become evil, nor 
evil good. The goodness of God is ceaseless, exces- 
sive, and in this world indiscriminate — is it therefore 
evil? 

Inf. That cannot be. 

Chr. True charity, then, — the charity impelled by 
love and guided by judgment, — can never be at one 
time good, at another time evil. False charity — of 
which I am not speaking — can never be good. AVe 
are speaking of true charity as the contrary to selfish 
indulgence. You confess to its emotions ; you con- 



GOD THE HOLY GHOST. 279 

fess, where the option existed of relieving with this 
fifty pounds an orphan family, or of spending it on 
a midnight orgy, you w^ould feel the former to be 
good, the latter to be evil. Whence derived you 
that feeling ? How did it originate ? 

Inf. Who can say ? It is part of my nature, of 
my instincts. 

Chk. Emotion, then, towards good, consciousness 
of satisfying some right principles within us when 
we are doing good in preference to doing evil is, you 
say, part of our nature. 

Inf. Certainly ; of every rightly-constituted na- 
ture. 

Che. We agree ; — of every rightly-constituted na- 
ture. How human nature is or can be thus rightly 
constituted we do not now discuss ; on that point we 
should probably diflfer. Thus far we concur, that 
an inclination to goodness and good acts is part of 
every man's nature, as it ought to be. How came 
it to be part ? 

Inf. How ! 

Chr. You do not assert man to be self-created? 

Inf. I do not go so far as that. 

Chr. Something else, then, must have created it 
in him. This something we term God. God, then, 
created emotion towards good, and the sensation of 
pleasure in doing good as part of our right nature. 
This feeling is God's creation within us. 

Inf. I comprehend. 

Chr. When we do good, and feel delight in doing 
it, our nature is then right; it is as God created it. 
The creation of such a feeling, such a right nature is 



280 GOD — THE HOLY GHOST. 

not ours; for as you admit, man made not himself: 
it is altogether God's. You confess also to the ex- 
istence of this feeling in every individual without 
exception whose nature is as it ought to be. It all, 
and in all cases, originates with God. 

We have thus, then, the fact that cannot be con- 
troverted, of a divine action of God in the soul of 
man, throughout his race, from the creation to the 
present time. By what one term shall we designate 
such divine action? Is it not necessarily Inspira- 
tion ? 

Inf. Call it such if it sufficiently express the 
thing itself. 

Chr. You thus acknowledge an inspiration of God 
in every man's soul since the creation — in your own 
soul. You have felt it urging you to good. You 
grant that, as man created not himself, it must be in 
common with the rest of your right nature, a crea- 
tion of God's. 

Inf. I anticipate your inference. 

Chk. Now, if any emotions be rightly called holy, 
emotions towards goodness must surelj^ be such. The 
Supreme Being who created such emotions must, for 
tlie same reason, be a holy Being, — be, in the strict- 
est sense, the Author and Finisher of all goodness 
and all holiness. You thus admit the inspiration in 
the soul of man to be that of the Supreme Being as 
essentially a holy God. Now God is a Spirit ; that 
which so inspires us is God the Holy Spirit, as we 
state in the Creed, " the Holy Ghost, one God with 
the Father and the Son." You confess such inspi- 
ration in every man impressed with the desire of, or 



GOD THE HOLY GHOST. 281 

feeling pleasure in doing good ; yet, directly you put 
on the character, not of a man, but of an Infidel, you 
exclaim, " I do not believe in such inspiration, nor 
yet in God as the Good and Holy Spirit." What 
more does Christianity here do than enunciate a 
divine fact between God and man as old as creation, 
and as broad as the heart of the human race ? 

Inf. But this, I opine, is not the sense in which 
Christians commonly understand the terms " Inspi- 
ration, the Holy Ghost." They mean, I think, to 
express by them something quite distinct from the 
God of creation and nature ; something not in ac- 
cordance with, but separate from, the original Cause 
of our existence, acting in some incomprehensible 
way, and producing an equally incomprehensible 
effect in the mind called " Grace." 

Che. I see you have looked at a great Christian 
doctrine through an heretical medium which distorts 
God into parts, and represents the Holy Spirit as a 
subordinate and partially independent Deity. You 
then suppose such distortion the orthodox faith, and 
argue against it as such. No proceeding is more 
common. 

Inf. But the orthodox doctrine of Grace itself in- 
fers a supernatural interference with our natural 
passions and propensities. The sj^stem is built on 
Grace versus Nature : whatever opposes this opera- 
tion of the Holy Ghost, j^roceeding, as it does, from, 
and being one with God, it condemns as sin. Now 
certain passions are inherent in our nature ; they 
were therefore clearly intended by the Creator of 
that nature to be brought out into action. 



282 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATURAL PASSIONR. 

Chr. I will grant you more. ISTot a single passion 
or affection exists in man's nature which was not 
only intended to be used, but the not using or de- 
veloping of which is not a criminal negligence. 

Inf. That is a very liberal idea ; but Christianity 
condemns these natural passions as sinful. 

Chr. Where? 

Inf. Everywhere throughout its revelation. 

Chr. Specify. We do not in this discussion admit 
general assertions on either side. We deal with the 
special facts of Christianity and Infidelity. 

Inf. Do you not admit my statement to be true ? 

Chr. Not as you intend and put it. Your state- 
ment is, " Christianity condemns the natural passions 
of man as in themselves sinful," which I entirely 
deny. Modify the statement thus, — " Christianity 
condemns the abuse of every natural passion in man 
as sinful," and I concur. There is a right and a 
wrong use in every thing. In us, with reference to 
God, the wrong use constitutes what we call sin. Of 
this fundamental distinction between good and evil 
few have ever made any question ; the great diffi- 
culty in the science of ethics in its application to 
particular instances, is to know what is the right, 
what is the wrong use of external and internal 
powers. All things to us are as their uses are, good 
or evil. Here is a drop of prussic acid ; the evil or 
the good of it is not in itself, but in its use ; it may 
be used by a poisoner or by a physician. The former 
being away from its right use, we call abuse. So 
with our own powers. The tongue may pray or 
swear ; the hand may work or murder ; the mind be 



CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATURAL PASSIONS. 283 

a temple of God, or a smithy of the devil ; every mem- 
ber an agent of sin, or an instrument of righteous- 
ness. Similarly also with our acquisitions. Knowl- 
edge is power, but it may be divine power or satanic 
power, health or poison. Riches may be a blessing 
or a curse to ourselves and society. Station and rank 
the greatest levers to immorality, or the strongest 
bulwarks of religion and modesty. Thus with every 
addition we make to ourselves, our means, our powers, 
we incur an additional responsibility for good or evil. 
The perversion of any of these means — in themselves 
quite neutral things^to evil, constitutes, with refer- 
ence to God, sin ; with reference to society, crime. 
"Which of these two, — the right use or the abuse, the 
evil or good of a thing, — we choose, depends on a 
man's own volition or wdll. Jesus Christ proffers to 
give us two things w^hich by nature w^e have not — 
the will to choose right, and the power to act upon 
that choice. But Christianity no more pronounces 
any passion or faculty of man to be itself sinful, than 
it does gold, iron, marble, minerals, herbs, or any 
power in nature to be in itself sinful. But as science 
teaches the real use of the latter, so does Christianity 
teach and regulate the use of the former. What 
sheer ignorance or barbarism is to the latter. Infi- 
delity, in my judgment, is to the former. 

Inf. But what you term " abuse," I probably think 
and term ''use." 

CriR. Yery likely. But as to the passions them- 
selves, they are God's creations in man ; and as 
science reveals to us the right use of God^s ci'eations 
in nature, so Christianity reveals to us the right use 



284: CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATURAL PASSIONS. 

of His creations, these passions included, within our- 
selves. They are themselves good, and designed for 
good. So far, it appears, we agree. 

Inf. All Christians do not; for some call and 
believe the utter mortification of all their natural 
passions. Sanctity. 

Chr. One topic at a time. Leaving this and that 
Christian alone, where does Christianity itself con- 
demn the passions as in themselves sinful ? 

Inf. Revenge is a natural passion — it condemns 
revenge as sinful. 

Chr. Immediately you allege a specific instance, 
we can deal with it. In one sense revenge is natural 
to man, for it yields pleasure to that nature as it 
now is. 

Inf. Precisely. The Latins called pleasure " vo- 
luptas," because it consists in doing just what we 
will ; we, too, for the same reason, call it pleasure, 
because it consists in doing what we please — and re- 
venge certainly gratifies our nature. 

Chr. But that nature is a fallen one. 

Inf. I^onsense. This is the way you Christians 
argue. You lay down certain postulates, and then 
proceed to reason upon them as if we too, who are 
not Christians, accepted such postulates for facts. 

Chr. Not so. We do accept as facts certain pos- 
tulates : our acceptance of them constitutes us Chris- 
tians ; your non-acceptance of them constitutes you 
Infidels. With our fellow-Christians we reason upon 
these postulates as upon a common foundation — but 
not with Infidels. 

Inf. Do you not state man's present nature to be 



CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATURAL PASSIONS. 285 

a fallen one ; and is not that one of tlie postulates of 
your system ? 

Chr. I do. And the taking such a fact for granted 
is also one of our postulates ; but I do not here ad- 
vance it as such, but merely as a statement of mine 
against a statement of yours. I say, " Our nature is 
now fallen : revenge is the passion of a fallen na- 
ture." You say, '' Our nature is not fallen : revenge, 
being one of its passions, may be legitimately in- 
dulged." Is that fairly stated? 

Inf. Fairly. 

Chr. Were you a Christian, this precept of Scrip- 
ture would settle the question, " Revenge not your- 
selves : Vengeance is mine, and I will repay, saith 
the Lord." ITot being a Christian, you hold its 
opposite. Thus, " Revenge yourselves : vengeance 
is every man's own right : he himself ought to repay 
his enemy." The difference then is, Christianity 
asserts revenge to be the depravation of a certain 
passion in man — which depravation is the result of 
a fall in man's whole nature, the passions included. 
Infidelity asserts revenge to be the pure original 
passion itself, and therefore rightly indulged. If 
Christianity admitted your premise, it would also 
your inference. It holds a contrary premise, and by 
consequence a contrary inference. Now Christianity 
expressly states every passion of man, as his nature 
came originally from God, to be good. " God saw all 
that He had made, and, behold, it was very good." 

Inf. I observe your point. 

1 Gen. i. 31. 



286 CHRISTIANITY AND THP: NATURAL PASSIONS. 

Chr. Christianity lays down this premise, ^'Re- 
venge is the depravation of a certain good or useful 
passion :" Infidelity this, " Revenge is no deprava- 
tion, bat the good, nnf alien passion itself." The 
question then is. Which of these premises is true, 
Christianity or yours ? 

Inf. Who or what is to decide ? 

Chr. We shall clear the ground for decision very 
easily. Christianity differs from you as to what 
constitutes the use or abuse of our natural instincts. 
Let us see in this instance of revenge, whether facts 
bear you or Christianity out as right. One man 
insults another : the insulted party waits his oppor- 
tunity, broods over his wrong, meets his enemy, and 
murders him. This is revenge. The forms of it — 
vendettas, assassinations, massacres, clan and family 
feuds, hereditary enmities, individual duels — are infi- 
nite. The man of honor shoots his man : the Caffre or 
the Red Indian spears every man, woman, and child 
in his enemy's household or village. This is nature. 
I admit it, and doubtless the Red Indian finds the 
successful indulgence of such revenge one of the high- 
est pleasures of that nature. But I assert it to be a 
fallen nature : such a nature in full action makes a 
fallen world. Civilized society could not keep togeth- 
er for one twelvemonth, were only this one passion of 
revenge permitted uncontrolled license of action. 

Inf. But I do not mean the revenge of Corsicans, 
of ancient feudatories, of Caffres, or Red Indians. 

Chr. Why not? Their nature is as much nature 
as yours — to judge by their passions, much stronger 
nature. Their right to give full indulgence to its 



CURISTIANITY AND THE NATURAL PASSIONS. 287 

instincts according to their ideas, is as indisputable 
as yours to give full indulgence to your instincts ac- 
cording to your ideas. 

Inf. You must not put the civilized iniidel on a 
par with such characters as these — they are savages. 

Chr. They are pure, simple, unsophisticated hu- 
man nature, not in the least tainted with " the super- 
stition" of Christianity, but holding, like yourself, 
revenge to be a noble, sublime, and genuine virtue. 
From such revenge, in its coarse nudity, why do 
you recoil ? Why do you shudder at Cain imbrued 
in a brother's blood ? 

Inf. Ah ! such revenge is entirely unnatural. 

Chr. That is now man's nature which man's na- 
ture now does. In this light, idolatry, perjury, sub- 
ornation, lying, deceitfulness, dishonoring of parents, 
theft, piracy, detraction, fraud, violence, rapacity, 
sensuality, are de facto human nature. The whole 
history of man is the history of such a nature as 
this. Here we do not need faith : the proofs are 
within the province of the mind and the senses. The 
evidence that such is human nature is supplied us by 
the civil and criminal codes of every nation on the 
earth. The nation having no such code is known, 
by the fact of such deficiency itself, to be nothing 
else than a tribe of savages or barbarians. 

Inf. As you name these passions they are un- 
doubtedly evil, but I will not admit you name them 
correctly. 

Chr. Does not the law of England define a thou- 
sand actions under one or other of these categories ? 
The law of every land does so, is compelled by the 



288 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATURAL PASSIONS. 

stern facts of human nature to do so. The legal 
definition of each crime may not in all ages and 
]iations be the same, but human nature is a nature of 
robbery or murder according to your as well as my 
definition of these two crimes. Ask any sane person 
if the act of Courvoisier upon the life of Lord Wil- 
liam Eussel did not involve '- murder." He, like the 
jury, would reply in the affirmative. Ask another 
person upon the same evidence the same question. 
Suppose, admitting the fact, he yet denied it to be 
murder, w^hat opinion would you form of his nature 
and character ? Would you trust him with the safety 
of a finger of your body ? 

Inf. Of a verity, no. 

Chr. You would reason, " If this man holds that 
cutting his master's throat at midnight be not mur- 
der, he will most probably, on the first opportunity 
which presents itself of theft or plunder, cut my 
throat at night." And the world would regard such 
reasoning as very solid. 

Inf. And I too. 

Chr. a man's real opinions or faith underlie all 
his actions. To deny then that there can be such a 
crime as murder, would j?er se evince extreme de- 
pravity in the denier. 

Inf. It would. 

Chr. Human nature denying it, would convict 
itself of such depravity. We have therefore on either 
ground, first, whether human nature commits a 
murder ; or, secondly, committing a treacherous, 
malevolent, and sanguinary deed, denies it to be 
murder, proof visible and tangible of evil existing in 



CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATURAL PASSIONS. 289 

that nature. We might apply the same course of 
reasoning to every other vice and crime, and their 
respective definitions. Now how came such evil 
there first ? 

Inf. It is in the nature. 

Chr. How came it in the nature ? Are you not 
now in a dilemma ? If it was not so at first, and yet 
is so now, you admit a fall, and so far become a 
Christian. If it was so at first, what becomes of 
your proposition that every such instinct of man's 
nature, being as you hold original, is good ? Either 
this evil is now in man's nature individually, or it 
is in him as the nature of the oak is in the acorn, 
generically. 

Inf. Not the latter : all men are not murderers. 

Chr. Certainly not ; nor in a murder is the cata- 
logue of crimes exhausted : the former, then ? 

Inf. Well. 

Chr. The nature of a murderer then is, even on 
this admission, so far an evil nature. That evil you 
say is born with him, is in him individually. If we 
write down the enumeration of all the vices, deficien- 
cies, crimes, and evil dispositions, is there any person 
living not subject to one or the other of them ? I ask 
not a rigid definition of them : throw the weights 
into the balance of laxity and mercy : exempt each 
individual from as many as you possibly can ; will 
you pronounce, after all allowances, one spotless 
from all in heart and life ? 

Inf. Impossible, every one has his flaws and faults. 

Chr. See, then, how constantly you admit in your 
own language truths which you refuse to believe in 

13 



290 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATURAL PASSIONS. 

the language of Christianity. Here you admit the 
whole doctrine of original sin. In many other points, 
I am convinced, if we reasoned inductively from facts 
a posteriori^ you would concede as perfectly true, the 
doctrines which Christianity lays down, a priori^ as 
matters of faith. Well then, every one has his faults, 
— confessedly faults. Every one of all mankind 
makes up human nature ; human nature is then 
more or less infected with evil. Not each individual 
in the same way, the same degree, but all in some 
degree and some way positively evil. Whether we 
argue then from the individual to the genus, or from 
the genus to the individual, the result is the same ; 
the existence of both individual and generic evil in 
human nature. The question then recurs, ''How 
came it there originally ?" The fact is as undeniable 
as it is painful : which is right reason, by ignoring it 
to bring down on ourselves and society all the dis- 
astrous consequences of voluntary blindness, or by 
confronting it, do the best we can to lessen and eradi- 
cate it ? 

Inf. I cannot gainsay that much evil exists in 
human nature ; the origin of the evil there or else- 
where who knows ? 

Che. We concur as to the fact ; as to the origin of 
the fact you have no knowledge. 

Inf. JSTor Christians either. 

Chr. We do not pretend to it. We deal with the 
fact itself: its origin falls within the province of 
faith, not knowledge. Our faith is, " that it was not 
so at the beginning." Human nature is not now 
what God created it ; there is evil in it now ; God 



CHRISTIANrrY ANT> THE FALL. 291 

cannot in any creature be the author of evil ; it is 
therefore a fallen nature, lapsed for the worse from 
God and its original creation. This postulate of 
faith we do not prove, but accept as the under-fact 
of the truth we both admit. On such truth recipro- 
cally admitted we do reason with you ; on the under- 
fact we do not. We aflfirm it as an article of the 
Christian faith : we believe it on the Word of God : 
on that Word we do not reason ; we accept it as 
coming directly from the Creator of all reason : 
by such acceptance we pronounce it more purely and 
authoritatively truth than any deduction of our own 
reason could possibly be : for to us the Word of God 
is, as we said, the reason of God. And what is the 
reason of a creature — especially of a fallen creature 
— compared to that of its Creator ? 

Inf. In recognizing the existence of evil we con- 
cur ; in accounting for it we differ. 

Chr. More accurately, I think. Infidelity cannot 
account for a fact which it feels itself compelled to 
admit : upon which all human as well as divine laws 
and restrictions proceed : which once ignored, society 
perishes. Our faith gives us the origin of it from a 
source more reliable than all the inferences of human 
knowledge ; in mere knowledge, therefore, we are on 
a par : where knowledge fails, you stop ; we walk 
further with a safer guide than knowledge. Faith 
indeed is a much firmer principle than knowledge : 
for the end of knowledge of every kind is faith. But 
observe how much of Christianity you have hereby 
conceded, the depravity of man's nature and all its 
logical inferences ; the fallen passions of man Chris- 



292 MONOGAMY AND POLYGAMY. 

tianity condemns ; so does every sound code of human 
law : such condemnation is not superstition, but a 
thing inseparable from both legislation and religion. 
These passions are depravations; to style them 
" natural" is as a fact correct : because they are so 
human nature stands itself condemned as evil; to 
affirm because they are natural they are not sinful 
or injurious, is to advance a proposition which will 
not bear a moment's investigation. 

Inf. Well, then, leaving the general question, I will 
moot a special moral objection included in it upon 
this very Word of Revelation itself. It is not in 
every instance consistent with itself. Here at any 
rate I can specify. 

Chr. Do so. 

Inf. At one period it tolerates, at another it pro- 
hibits polygamy. That is adultery in a Christian 
which was none in a Jew. Those who in the Old 
Testament — Abraham, Jacob, David- — are called 
saints, would now in England, where the I^ew Testa- 
ment forms the basis of the law, be tried, convicted, 
and transported for an offence which, under the old 
dispensation, was none w^hatever. Is not this incon- 
sistency of a gross kind, being on one of the gravest 
points of social and domestic morality ? 

Chr. Christianity, you say, condemns Polygamy. 

Inf. res ; I also say Judaism permitted Polyg- 
amy. Christianity and Judaism are in your view 
the former and the latter phases of one and the same 
religion ; these two phases by contradicting one an- 
other on an important moral point prove one, at least, 
not to be divine. According to Judaism David was 



MONOGAMY AND POLYGAMY. 293 

not the less a saint for keeping a royal seraglio ; ac- 
cording to Christianity he was an adulterer. 

Chr. Where does Christianity term David an 
adulterer for keeping a royal seraglio ? 

Inf. He would, I mean, be now branded as such, 
if he lived under the dispensation of Christianity. 

Chr. That is quite a different thing. 

Inf. No; not so far as morality is in question. 
What is wrong now, was wrong then ; what was not 
wrong then, cannot be wrong now. Time — to trans- 
fer one of your maxims — is no element in the moral 
right and wrong of things. Theft, lying, murder, 
were as wrong in the antediluvians as they are in us. 
So also was polygamy in its own nature as wrong in 
the patriarchs and prophets as it would now be in 
any of us. Yet Judaism did not condemn it ; Chris- 
tianity does condemn it. Select which of these 
phases of religion you please as Divine, the other 
ceases to be Divine, and in such cessation destroys 
also the Divinity of the other. 

Chr. How would Christianity, by such cessation, 
destroy the Divine authority of Judaism? 

Inf. Because Christianity is the only thing which 
puts any sense or meaning into Judaism. Without 
Christianity as its development Judaism for the last 
eighteen hundred years is dead and formless dust. 
Suppose Christianity false, nothing of Judaism is 
fulfilled. The times specified by Judaism for the 
fulfilment of its futurities is irretrievably past. Ju- 
daism itself would thus be a proven falsehood. 

Chr. By this argument the truth of Judaism de- 
pends on the truth of Christianity ? 



294 MONOGAMY AND POLYGAMY. 

Inf. Certainly ; do you deny it ? 

Chr. JSTo ; I fully admit it. I am only surprised 
at your advancing it. 

Inf. Because it fixes you on the question of polyg- 
amy in a complete dilemma. Choose which you 
will, your choice in its fair inference destroys the 
Divine authority of both religions. My argument 
here is, I think, unanswerable. 

Chr. Do you wish it to be so ? Do you wish both 
Judaism and Christianity to turn out detected impo- 
sitions ? 

Inf. I wish all things which are true. If they are 
not true, let both, come what may, be detected and 
rejected. 

Chr. The whole of Christianity ? 

Inf. ITo, not the whole, for parts of it are perfect 
in their beauty. Every one believes something of 
Christianity. 

Chr. Would you then reject that part of it which 
prohibits bigamy and polygamy ? 

Inf. Decidedly not. No philosopher, I conceive, 
will defend or justify polygamy. I, on this point, 
utterly condemn Judaism, and deny its Divine ori- 
gin or power of dispensation. I hold in this entirely 
with Christianity against Judaism. 

Chr. Yet you would destroy Christianity upon a 
suppositive difference with Judaism, in which you 
yourself wholly coincide with Christianity. Strange 
actions Infidelity commits you to against yourselt 
and your most philosophic convictions ! The whole 
religion of civilization, with its vast amount of ad- 
mitted good, is to be abolished by a philosopher, 



MONOaAMY A2s^D POLYGAMY. 295 

because, condemning a practice which he also con- 
demns, he thinks such condemnation condemnatory 
also, by a reflective process from Judaism, of its own 
Divinity ! What a curious confusion of motives ! 

Inf. Be it so ; what has it to do with the argu- 
ment ? 

Chr. Very much, in the judgment of practical 
men. As an anti-polygamist you are a Christian, a 
practical man w^ould therefore call npon you to sup- 
port Christianity. " No," you reply, " that is the very 
reason, the unanswerable reason why I must abolish 
Christianity." Now practical men have a right to 
expect that if you go about to abolish Christianity, 
you must take up your ground of assault where you 
entirely disagree, not entirely agree with its precepts. 
If as a Mormonite maintaining the rightfulness of 
polygamy you advocated the abolition of Christianity, 
which forbids it as a sin, there would be, and there 
would appear some consistency in your argument. 
But an anti-poh^gamist w^orking to overthrow^ Chris- 
tianity, because it also condemns polygamy, would, 
to non-philosophers, be an unintelligible contradic- 
tion. They would instantly demand, " Why from 
that very point in which you profess yourself a 
Christian do you impugn Christianity ?" 

Inf. Suppose, then, such argument not to be ex- 
actly appropriate from my lips as an anti-polyga- 
mist ; suppose it to proceed as you say from a Mor- 
monite. How^ do you refute it ? 

Chr. I am arguing with an Infidel, not a Mor- 
monite. I am an Anglican Churchman, you are an 
Iniidel. Let us keep to what we really are, and not 



296 MONOGAMY AND POLYGAMY. 

assume other people's parts and cliaracters. A Mor- 
monite takes different ground from you. He asserts 
polygamy to be either unabolished by Christianity, 
or to be a privilege granted by the Lord to His pecu- 
liar saints in these latter days, themselves. What- 
ever Mormonism be, depravity, ignorance, or kna- 
very, it is not Infidelity. 

Inf. It strikes me, however, that the argument 
would, in another person's mouth — a Turk's, for in- 
stance—be irrefutable. Are you judicious in avoid- 
ing it ? 

Che. It is not my intention to do so. I thus far 
only desired to show in what a contradictory character 
Infidelity stands forth to the world as a reformer or 
a subverter of Christianity. It could not answer the 
first simple question put to it by any head of a 
family. Let us now grapple with the objection itself. 
Christianity and Judaism, you aver, in the matter of 
polygamy contradict each other ; both, therefore, 
cannot be of Divine authoritv. 'No matter which is 
false ; if one is, both are. This is, I think, the pith 
of your argument. 

Inf. It is. 

Chk. First, then, I concede that if Judaism be a 
false religion, Christianity is so also — and if Chris- 
tianity be false, Judaism is so also. 

Inf. You concede also that Christianity prohibits 
polygamy. 

Chr. It does. 

Inf. And that Judaism did not condemn it? 

Chr. It did not. 

Inf. Which was wrong ? 



MONOGAJVIY AND POLYGAMY. 297 

Chr. Neither. 

Inf. Prove how, of two contradictories, one is not 
wrong. 

Chr. Where is the contradiction between polyga- 
my and monogamy ? In what does it consist ? 

Inf. Why, in every point. 

Chr. Specify. 

Inf. In the very fact of two wives, which is in 
itself a contradiction. 

Chr. According to your Deity, Nature ? 

Inf. I think so. 

Chr. Nature then can, it seems, when it suits 
philosophy, be in perfect accord with Christianity. 
But here I believe you wrest nature somewhat to 
your own preconceptions, or rather to your uncon- 
scious reception of the teachings of Christianity. 
What does " polygamy" in itself mean ? 

Inf. It means marriage with many wives at one 
time. 

Chr. And bigamy ? 

Inf. With two wives. 

Chr. And monogamy ? 

Inf. With one wife at one time. 

Chr. In each and every case, then, it is marriage. 
What constitutes marriage ? 

Inf. a sacred vow of fidelity mutually plighted 
to each other by the respective parties. 

Chr. What makes it " sacred ?" 

Inf. Its attestation by some holy rite before God. 

Chr. Is no other union than that which God Him- 
self witnesses and consecrates, matrimony or mar- 
riage ? 

13* 



298 MONOGAMY AND POLYGAMY. 

Int. I should say not — it may be an union of some 
kind, but not marriage. 

Che. What say you then to our poor-hoiise and 
registrar " unions/' — to mere civil unions, — are they 
marriages at all ? 

Int. They are civil contracts, civilly binding — 
nothing more — they were not, I infer, intended to be 
more than civilly binding on either party. 

Chr. Who made these civil contracts binding ? 

Int. The State. 

Chr. Had it right and power to do so ? 

Inf. Power it had, or it could not have done it. 
A civil right of making them civilly binding it also 
had. 

Chr. Had the State the same right of making a 
contract between one man and two, or three, or ten 
women, as binding as it has already made this con- 
tract between one man and one woman? 

Inf. The State? 

Chr. Yes — the State, simply as the State, Pagan, 
Infidel, or Mohammedan. 

Inf. Yes — any State, simply as the State, has the 
right of making a union between one man and one 
hundred women as civilly binding as between one 
man and one woman. Most States — the Christian 
excepted — do so. 

Chr. Was polygamy a civil bond among the Jews ? 

Inf. If I answer " yes," you will demand, " What 
had it then to do with their religion any more than 
our civil union-house contracts have to do with the 
Church of Christ among us ?" 

Chr. Perhaps I should. 



MONOGAMY AND POLYGAMY. 299 

Inf. I will confine myself to the statement that 
whether it was only civil, or something more than 
civil, it was not condemned as sinful in itself by their 
religion. 

Chr. I have admitted as much. So far, then, as 
the civil power is in question, tlie Jewish civil polity 
had the same right as any other in ancient or 
modern nations, to legalize polygamy. Now enters 
the religion of the argument. Polygamy, as we 
saw^, infers marriage, and therefore sacred vows in 
contradistinction to mere civil engagements. When 
the man pledges the same sacred vows to ten instead 
of one, is that act an extension of or a contradiction 
to marriao:e? 

Inf. Your proposition is, that the extension of 
sacred vows was as valid betw^een one man and any 
number of w^omen among the Jews, as the limitation 
of sacred vows to one man and one w^oman is among 
Christians. Circumstances create the social, as Di- 
vine commands constitute the only moral, difference 
between the single and plural species of marriage. 

Chr. I am replying to your objection affirming 
that, in the matter of polygamy, a contradiction 
exists betw^een Judaism and Christianity. The word 
contradiction is a misnomer. Limitation and exten- 
sion are, in this case, the proper terms to be applied. 
The sacred vow^s which Jacob plighted to Eachel 
w^ere the same as he plighted to Leah: the hand- 
maidens of Leah and Rachel were inclusions, and so 
understood, w^ithin the same sanctities. Had Jacob 
trespassed beyond this circle, he would have been an 
adulterer : w^ithin it he w^as none. The same rea- 



300 LIMITATION AND EXPANSION. 

soning applies to the instances of David, Solomon, 
and others, with whom the marriage-tie consisted in 
the obligation of sacred vows between many women 
and one man : with us it is between one woman and 
one man. The change forms a limitation or concen- 
tration, but no contradiction — and the dijfference here 
between Judaism and Christianity resolves itself into 
that readjustment, which every one concedes, of one 
and the same law : under certain circumstances ex- 
panding, under others contracting, its operations. 

Inf. Supply me with an illustration of your prin- 
ciple. 

Chr. Circumcision, as a covenant sacrament, was 
a limitation to the Jewish people. Baptism is an 
extension of the same sacrament to all nations. 
The paschal sacrifice was a limitation within Pales- 
tine : the Eucharist is its extension over the whole 
world. The Temple of God's name and presence was 
a limitation within Jerusalem : its extension in the 
form of Christian Churches pervades all countries. 
The peculiar people were a limitation between the 
Mediterranean and the Euphrates : tlieir spiritual 
extension embraces all nations, peoples, and races. 
On the other hand, as every previously-limited 
blessing became thus in Christ a catholic extension, 
so the moral purities became- proportionably con- 
tracted or intensified. Judaism forbade adultery. 
Christianity forbids its source — in the volirion or 
spirit. Judaism forbade divorce without a legal 
document of divorce. Christianity forbids it alto- 
gether, except for adultery. Judaism forbade false 
swearing : Christianity forbids sweaiing itself. Ju- 



LIMITATION AND EXPANSION OF LAW. 301 

daism forbade excessive retaliation : Christianity for- 
bids retaliation altogether. Judaism forbade hating 
a neighbor : Christianity forbids any man to be 
hated. These precepts are all limitations of previ- 
ous extensions. The extension of the marriage state 
was in the same way limited or contracted by our 
Lord to what it had originally been in the begin- 
ning — in Paradise. The restitution of the Paradise 
law exacted correspondent Paradise purity of soul. 
Christians live under this code of the Restoration, 
and so far from seeing any contradiction between 
the expansion and limitation of the same law, we 
regard the Gospel as that expansion to which the 
law, by its very limitation, was provisional. 

Inf. Polygamy now, then, is a sin. 

Chr. Certainly. 

Inf. Everywhere? 

Chr. Everywhere — for every precept of Christ is 
Catholic, everywhere obligatory. 

Inf. Nevertheless it seems that our British State, 
which permits something worse than polygamy — 
unions of man and woman without any recognition 
whatever of God in the matter — punishes bigamy as 
a transportable offence. How is that? 

Chr. The State, not the Church, is responsible for 
the absurdities and inconsistencies of State legisla- 
tion. I should heartily pity the woman who formed 
an alliance with any man on State principles, which, 
if adopted by the people of England, would inevit- 
ably reduce our whole female population to a more 
godless condition than even that of the Moham- 
medan women — g^uod Di avertant ! 



302 LAW OF LIMITATION AND EXPANSION. 

Inf. Still it strikes me that any variation in moral 
principle must be tantamount to a contradiction or a 
violation. 

Chr. Is a provisional government a contradiction 
to the government which it precedes as provisional ? 

Inf. No. 

Chr. The Jews married two or ten wives ? 

Inf. Yes. 

Chr. Christians marry one ? 

Inf. Yes. 

Chr. In Heaven " they neither marry nor are 
given in marriage." Marriage does not exist in 
Heaven. Judaism was provisional to Christianity, 
Christianity is provisional to Heaven — Heaven is 
the state originally designed for man. As the wheel 
of the Church revolves from the depths of the fall 
to the heights of Heaven again, its spokes may be 
many — the Adamic, Noahic, the patriarchal, the 
legal, the prophetic — but its axle is one, Christ, and 
all these successions move round Him upward to 
the same point from which the fall took place. In 
that Heaven the true marriage — here symbolized by 
holy wedlock and its children, to symbolize which 
marriage was the first sacrament ordained of God 
between Christ and his Church, — will fulfil and 
supersede its types on earth. 

Inf. You speak, I observe, as if we were going 
back to Heaven, and as if we were now seeking 
things again which we once lost, and which are 
waiting our recovery of them. 

Chr. Yes. The things we lost are those we are 
seeking to recover — innocence, happiness, angelic 



HEAVEN THE ANTERIOR STATE. 303 

communion, Heaven, God. They have never moved : 
it is we who have moved from the fold and gone 
astray ; where they ever were they still are ; we are 
not where we were ; oar whole struggle is to return 
where God at first placed us : that being once effect- 
ed in Christ, the second Adam, all the rest w^hich 
God designed for Adam in his original position, will 
follow as of course — immortality, happiness, the eter- 
nity of the Divine union. The Heaven I regain is 
the Heaven I lost: the Heaven before me is that 
far behind from which I fell. It is one Heav- 
en, and all the types of its things in the Church 
refer to its existence before as well as after the 
world. We are driven by sin and the sword of 
judgment from the western gate of Paradise: we 
wander on and on, pilgrims from it, ever remember- 
ing it, always looking back towards it. When our 
steps are farthest from it, at its very antipodes, 
Christ baptizes us — in Christ we continue walking, 
till, having compassed the round of this world of 
time, we come back again to the opposite and eastern 
gate, w^here Christ, and not the sword, is : there by 
Him received, and again paradised, we re-enter upon 
the possessions we ourselves had by sin lost, and by 
just judgment had been disinherited from. Thus we 
consider all law. Divine and human, in this world to 
be merely provisional : it is a substitute for the time 
being for that Love which is the only law of Heaven ; 
merely a substitute, nothing more : now indispensa- 
ble, hereafter incapable of existence, swallowed up, 
like all things else, in the victory of Christ and Love. 
The sacrament of the Eucharist thus, for instance, 



304 ALL LAW PROVISIONAL TO HEAVEN. 

lifts US above the law of present things, into that 
only law of the Church which prevailed before, and 
will prevail after all things, present and provisional, 
have passed away. As the children of God, this 
love is the only law we can live in: as inheritors of 
heaven, it is the only feeling the soul can rightly 
exist in : as members of each other, it is the only 
affection which the soul can rightly feel towards 
other Christians. The altar-unity of Christ being 
broken in the Church on earth, it thereby ceases to 
be the reflection of the Church that from everlasting 
was, and from everlasting will be, in Heaven : they 
that break that unity of love on earth, must of ne- 
cessity fail of that Church in Heaven, which ever 
has been, and ever will be, and never can be any 
thing else than this very unity of love which they 
violate. Of this same love between Christ and the 
soul of the Church, holy matrimony is the sacra- 
mental symbol: its sanctity consists, not merely in 
itself, as the present law of God to us, but in that 
which it symbolizes as the law eternal of God — -the 
love and union of Christ with the soul, and of the 
soul with Christ. The realization of this, which will 
take place in Heaven, will constitute that perfect 
union of the immortal soul with its only source of 
happiness, its only object of love, which marriage is 
now given us of God in our present state sacrament- 
ally to represent, and ever remind us of. The sym- 
bol expires where the reality is — in Heaven. For 
this cause also right-minded Christians have in all 
ages guarded with extreme jealousy the sacramental 
revelations of the Chnrch: what they show to the 



MAN NOT AN ISOLATION. 305 

senses is of nature and of time, but what they sym- 
bolize to the soul is of God and eternity. 

Inf. You thus will not permit man to be an isola- 
tion in any respect. 

Chr. No : is Nature an isolation from God ? Is 
any part of nature or its laws an isolation from any 
other part ? Are nations, hearts, minds, knowledges, 
isolations from each other? Is it possible, then, for 
the soul to be isolated and disconnected from its 
Creator, or from the laws of its own eternity ? 

Inf. But that Creator, and that eternity, I must 
observe, are represented to us by the sacraments and 
Scriptures of the Church in such a light as to compel 
me to withhold my assent from the claims of the 
Church to a Divine origin. Now Nature is my God : 
the laws of Nature are to me the only revelation of 
God. Bat when I read in your Scriptures that God 
commanded the Israelites to exterminate — not all 
nations, as Newman asserts — but even the Canaan- 
ites, I affirm them to falsify the character of God. 
From such a deity, if my soul cannot, yet it would 
gladly be isolated. Such a merciless command 
never could have issued from a merciful God. 

Chr. Your reasoning is, God is merciful : this 
command is merciless, therefore not from God. 

Inf. Exactly. 

Chr. Whence, in the first place, do you derive 
your evidence that God is merciful? 

Inf. Your own Scriptures everywhere affirm it. 

Chr. The same Scriptures represent him also as 
a God of justice, and the extermination of the Ca- 
naanites as an act of justice. If justice and mercy 



306 THE LAWS OF GOD AND OF NATURE IDENTICAL. 

were irreconcilable qualities, such as could not co- 
exist in the same Being, some appearance of weight 
might attach to your objection. At present I see 
none. A sovereign power in one case pardons ; the 
same sovereign power, in another case, permits jus- 
tice to take its course. What exercise of sovereignty, 
under any constitution, is of more frequent occur- 
rence ? Because the Crown, in many instances, en- 
forces the law of death against capital criminals, does 
it follow that the Queen herself is a merciless being ? 
or that, with reference to the welfare of all classes in 
her dominions, such enforcement is contrary to the 
soundest principles of mercy ? What individuals are 
to her civilly, nations are to God — for, as we said, 
nations must receive judgment in this world. Mur- 
derers are hanged ; is the Queen herself a murderess, 
because, under her, the law hangs the murderer? or 
does the Crown forfeit its characteristic of mercy, 
because she refuses to extend its exercise towards 
the vilest and most dangerous criminals ? Common- 
sense dictates, no. Justice and mercy are attributes, 
the several actions of which may exist in perfect 
harmony in the same person. The extirpation of 
the Canaanites is an example of the justice of the 
Almighty upon a criminal nation, which no more 
impugns His mercy, than the execution of a hard- 
ened and blood-stained assassin would militate 
against the clemency of an earthly king. If you 
adduce the Scriptures as your authority for God 
being merciful, you must admit them also as author- 
ity for God being really and truly just. The de- 
struction of the Canaanites was an act of simple 



GOD IN SCRIPTURE AND IN NATURE. 307 

justice, under the law against national sins : instead 
of falsifying, it is in perfect keeping witli every idea 
of the Almighty as a just and holy God. Against 
the vindication of such law by any powers or instru- 
ments the Almighty is pleased to select, not a w^ord 
can be said which would not disqualify every human 
government from vindicating its own laws, by the 
hands of such executioners as it pleased to appoint 
— axemen, soldiers, hangmen — on the head of law- 
less and abandoned desperadoes. The utmost which 
can be objected is, ''God might have displayed His 
mercy on the Canaanites :" well, He did so for four 
hundred years — a longer time, I think, than any 
other nation in the records of history, has been per- 
mitted to remain utterly corrupt and demoralized, 
without being also denationalized* and destroyed. 
His mercy found no response. He then proceeded 
to judgment, and exterminated them by the hands 
of His executioners the Jews. His right to do so is 
not questioned, but you assert that an entire over- 
looking of the national vice and turpitude would be 
more in unison with your idea of the character of God. 
It may be with yours, but not with ours. Justice, 
not mercy, is certainly tlie first element of all govern- 
ment, of all public and private morality. It would, 
therefore, on the contrary, appear to me very sus- 
picious if the records of Divine government supplied 
us with no examples of justice w^ithout mercy, as it 
does of innumerable instances of justice superseded 
by mercy. 

Inf. There is, nevertheless, something extremely 
h rrowiiigin the supposition of a whole luition swept 



308 GOD IN SCRIPTURE AND IN NATURE. 

off by Divine injunction ; the heart refuses to assign 
such a command to God. 

Chr. Because your heart, though professing itself 
not a Christian, has been moulded under the general 
impressions of that faith which presents the Almighty 
to us as the God — not of justice, but of Infinite 
Mercy in Christ. Such impression is correct. But, 
if you can, try to separate God from Christ ; then 
give your reasons for the impression that God is 
Mercy, not Justice. 

Inf. I derive it from ITature itself — the beauty of 
creation, the revolution of the seasons, the faculties 
of mind and body, the sense of enjoyment, the appe- 
tite for so many various pursuits of happiness, the 
pleasures emanating from the very consciousness of 
existence and health — all, and many more, being such 
reasons as are insisted upon in your pulpits as proofs 
of the goodness and loving mercy of God. 

Chr. Which amount to this — that, whatever of 
good or of happiness we in our present state experi 
ence, we are indebted for its existence and enjoyment 
to God, as the Author of our being in this state. 
That is evident. Are you, upon the same ground, 
indebted to Him for whatever of pain, misfortune, 
and evil affects you in the same state ? 

Inf. What say you yourself? 

Chr. I, being a Christian, know that nothing 
which comes to me in Christ from God can be aught 
else than good. But outside of Christ, what say you, 
as an Infidel, on the natural argument ? If Nature 
tells you that He is the Author of your good, as you 



GOD nsr SCRIPTURE AND IN NATURE. 309 

define good, does she tell you that He is also the 
Author of your evil, as you define evil ; for on the 
truth of these definitions the whole question really 
revolves ? If she does not, she does not oppose the 
voice of revelation. If she does, then which pre- 
ponderates — the evil or the good, the misery or the 
happiness? on that preponderance depends the moral 
character of your deity according to Nature, or what 
you deem Nature. 

Inf. But that question constitutes the profoundest 
investigation of philosophy. 

Chr. Why should it, if Nature be plain on the 
point ? But Nature is, if possible, more than Scrip- 
ture, the crux philosophorum. When called upon to 
interpret it, they are much in the position of Bel- 
shazzar's astrologers with regard to the writing on the 
wall ; the wall is plain enough, but the writing there- 
on is not' — ^it is inexplicable. You, as an Infidel, hold 
neither man nor nature to be fallen : yet you state 
nature itself proves to you this goodness and mercy 
of God. Where, I demand, are these attributes, 
when He, being almighty as well as good, permits 
such a vast amount of bodily pain and mental 
misery to descend upon, and from generation to gen- 
eration afflict, creatures not sinful or fallen ? Is that 
justice, much less goodness ? Observe the conclu- 
sion, with reference to God, to which your denial of 
the sinful nature of man immediately conducts your 
natural argument. If you hold man's sinlessness, 
man's misery compels you to infer God neither good 
nor just — therefore no God at all. 



310 GOD IN SCKIPTUEE AND IN NATURE. 

Inf. There is an immense deal of misery of every 
kind, social, individual, corporeal, spiritual, in this 
world of ours. 

Che. Does any thing in man deserve or engender 
it ? If not, what say you of God who permits it — is 
that goodness ? 

Inf. Frankly, no. 

Chr. You absolve man, then, at the expense of 
God, or rather by utterly destroying any conception 
of a God. Is this the result of your argument of 
Nature? Does it not sound, at the best, superla- 
tively unnatural and unreasonable? — the creature 
righteous, yet a sufferer ; the Creator evil, in fact, a 
heartless tyrant towards his own creature. This, I 
apprehend, is the reverse of the induction intended : 
you prove by nature God not merciful, but worse 
than merciless. 

Inf. You wish me to concede the fallen nature of 
man. 

Chr. You see the direct consequence of denying 
it, it will not permit you to advance another step in 
your philosophy, except by binding you to maintain 
that greatest of absurdities, that the creature is more 
righteous than the Creator — man more sinless than 
the Almighty. It leaves you without even the no- 
tion of a God. Satan himself comes nearer than any 
senseless heathen idol to the idea at which you thus 
arrive. You do not intend this frightful inference; 
but what shall we think of the "intellect" of such 
Intidelity? Admit man's nature to be one of sin; 
grant misery in some form or other to be the in- 
evitable development and seeding of sin ; call this 



GOD IN SCRIPTUEE AND IN NATURE. 311 

seeding the law against sin — such law is just ; nature 
and man himself, in all the laws he himself enacts, 
testify to its justice ; God who decreed such connection 
between sin and misery comes then before us in 
no new character, but simply as not interfering 
between such laws and their operation on man. In 
Christ He does interfere ; but that is mercy. Prayer 
will cause Him to interfere, and ever show this 
mercy. The Christian, therefore, believes all the 
good he enjoys to be the gift of God ; but more, he 
knows all the misery he suffers to be, as its seed, in 
sin ; this suffering he considers just, because sin is 
disobedience to that law of God which is holy, just, 
and good. For mercy he looks to God from another 
point and in another character than that of his first 
or natural birth. Now I do not say, " Believe this ;" 
I only say, this theory is consistent with itself and 
in harmony with all its parts ; all things under it 
seem to fall at once into their right places ; it ac- 
counts for men and the world as they are ; it forces 
us to feel that we are governed by a sovereign who 
has never tolerated wickedness with impunity : that 
our own sinfulness has not been incurred without a 
present and a fearful penalty upon our souls and 
bodies ; our very suffering proves the sceptre over us 
to be of unfaltering and unswerving righteousness. 
That very righteousness again being pledged to us, 
and our salvation in Christ becomes to us as equally 
unfaltering a guarantee for the mercy, as out of 
Christ, it is seen and acknowledged to be, of the 
justice of God. The assurance of the righteousness 
of God in His justice is made to us the confirmation 



312 GOD IN SCRIPTURE AND IN NATURE. 

of His righteousness in the truth of His mercy. 
Thus the more holy we believe God, the surer also 
we believe His love to us in Christ. If we suffer for 
sin justly as men, as justly shall such suffering cease 
forever in us as members of Christ. But what 
superstructure of any philosophy at all can you in 
this matter erect on the basis of Infidelity ? Some 
such process of reasoning as you have attempted led 
the Manichgeans in old times to conclude Satan him- 
self to be God : some such leads the modern Hin- 
doos to worship idols with the imputed properties of 
Satan. Why ? they first deified themselves as sinless ; 
but reasoned they, " We sufi'er a thousand evils : being 
sinless we suffer unjustly and unmeritedly ; he who in- 
flicts, permits, or connives at our miseries, must be a 
being delighting himself in the pains of others — the 
evil one. JSTevertheless we are manifestly in his 
power, we are at his mercy ; we must propitiate, we 
must worship him ; sinless and innocent as we are, 
we must adore this cruel and evil being." This 
terrible error rose from the false premise, that man is 
not a fallen nature. Acknowledging no sin in them- 
selves, men knew not in what light to regard the 
Supreme Power which thus permitted sinlessness to 
be a perpetual sufferer. The same inferences lay 
latent in the whole system of Pelagianism, which has 
partly for this reason undergone severer denuncia- 
tions than many forms of less obnoxious heathenism 
itself from the councils of the Church. This species of 
Infidelity thus ends, not in simply disbelieving God, 
but by some astounding infatuation of '' Infidel in- 
tellect" placing Satan himself on the throne of God. 



GOD IN SCRIPTURE AND IN NATURE. 313 

Inf. Oh ! you assign results to Infidelity not ne- 
cessarily involved in it. 

Chr. ''Pure infidelity" — belief in nothing — does 
not exist. Relative Infidelity infers positive belief 
in the contraries of Christianity. When Christianity 
teaches " there is a God," Infidelity, by demurring, 
means, " I believe something else than what Chris- 
tianity does to be God." What that is, it never is 
able to give us any idea of. 

Inf. It is, as I have repeatedly said, Nature. 

Chr. Yes, and as yon have repeatedly exemplified, 
a nature of which the divinity vanishes at the first 
touch of the finger of a Christian child. Let ns enter 
more practically into an analysis of this deity of In- 
fidelity. Whatever visibly exists is either nature or 
artificialized from nature, — is that so ? 

Inf. It is, what then — 

"Est Deus quodcunque vides, quocunque moveris" — 

the Universe is God — Nature in its plenitude is God. 

Chr. Just so. And if so, every part of the uni- 
verse is part of God, every creature in nature is part 
of God. A tiger is nature — is a tiger part of God ? 

Inf. Ridiculous. 

Chr. Not a whit more so than the whole system 
of Pantheism, which thus makes nature God. If 
nature be God, why deride the Egyptians, who, as 
Pantheists, consistently worshipped the basest beasts 
in nature ? Th^e African negroes worship, some a 
stone, some a monkey, some a venomous snake, each 
its own fetich. If nature be God, such worshij) is 
logically due and right — a stone being part of nature 

14 



314 GOD IN SCRIPTURE AND IN NATURE. 

is thus pai't of God : stone-worship, beast-worship, 
block-worship, reptile-worship, is not idolatry, but 
sound philosophy. 

Inf. Nature is the only true deity, but whether in 
her meanest aspects or creations she should be wor- 
shipped, is a distinct question. 

Chr. For w^hom? for philosophers ? It is certainly 
none for a Christian. Questionable whether a man 
may worship a rat, a toad, a lizard ! The absurdity 
is not in your inference, which is logically correct, 
but in the premise, that nature is the deity. If it be 
so, Pantheism is the true religion ; every thing in 
nature being instinct with deity, may, perhaps ought, 
to be worshipped. The lowest Negro tribes, such as 
adore things horrible and not to be named, are, after 
all, not idolaters, but practical Pantheists, true logic- 
al philosophers ; the intellect of infidelity appears 
to have attained its brightest lustre here ! 

Inf. But in despite of the apparent absurdity, why, 
nature being deity, should not each man select out 
of all nature any part or object he pleases, to wor- 
ship as the symbol or representative of the whole 
deity of nature ? 

Chr. If nature be deity, I really do not see why 
he should not. Every individual, according to his 
taste and mental calibre, Negro, Hottentot, Tartar, 
Malay, might exercise his right of private judgment 
to the utmost extent in the selection of his gods ; 
compared to most of them, a sagacious Newfound- 
land dog, or the Achilles in Hyde Park, would, I 
imagine, be very respectable deities. Now, what 
thorough trash, — it deserves no better appellation, — is 



PANTHEISM. 315 

this Pantheism when reduced from the verbiage of 
the German " cloud-mind," to hard, matter-of-fact 
practice, as it is in the whole modern idolatrous 
world ! The very Negro has absolutely forestalled 
in practice the conclusions of the Pantheistic " in- 
tellects" of Germany. Your table here is loaded 
with Infidel productions, most of them, I observe, 
originals or translations from the German — not one 
idea is there in them which w^as not thousands of 
years ago substantiated and concreted into idolatry 
as coarse and foul as the grain and features of its 
misshapen images. iTature, exclaims the Pantheist, 
is God. Try it ; here is your cat, pure beast-nature ; 
ask your servant to worship it. Reduce your Pan- 
theism, as whole nations have done it, to practice. 
Your servant being unfortunately a common-minded 
English Christian, would probably resent the request 
by dispatching the innocent emblem of Pantheistic 
nature through the open door yonder with his anti- 
pantheistic foot. Nevertheless worse things than 
this domestic and serviceable animal have been 
adored by nations of Pantheists : we call them 
idolaters ; for idolatry is nothing else than practical 
Pantheism. Infidel intellect it seems has not, apart 
from Christianity, in the nineteenth century, ad- 
vanced further or soared higher than the fetishism 
of barbarian Africa. 

Inf. But this is sarcasm, not argument. 

Chr. Far from it. If much of the Infidelity of the 
day be Pantheism, or, as you word it, the notion that 
nature is the only deity, then is it in principle, and 
would be in honest practice, the vile idolatry of old 



316 PANTHEISM. 

Egypt and of modern Nigritia. Any thing is God ; 
any thing therefore may be worshipped ; what the 
thing is, depending on the man's own choice and pre- 
dilection. Is this the ultima Thule attained by the 
navigation of Infidelity on its own card and com- 
pass ? 

Inf. You assume the most degrading, the Negro 
view of Pantheism. Look at Nature — not in her 
lowest, but her highest developments, — in an Alex- 
ander, a Pericles, a Phidias, a Washington. 

Chr. Pantheism not in its mere animal, but its 
human phase — hero-worship, as it is termed. 

Inf. Well, hero-worship : the nature of such heroes 
is the highest manifestation of deity with which we 
are acquainted ; we know nothing of deity higher 
than as it is evolved in such. The deity being nature 
and these being the highest natures, it follows they 
are the highest ideal or form we have of the Deity. 

Chr. So reasoned Syria, Greece, Rome, of old : 
their gods were heroes deified ; their religion hero- 
worship. Pantheism in this aspect is a plagiarism 
from the Gr.eek mythology, a would-be reviver of 
the Olympian gods, adding a few moderns after its 
own peculiar taste to the catalogue. 

Inf. And rightly. 

Chr. And this " intellect" ends not where Greece, 
but the idolatry of Greece, stood eighteen hundred 
years ago, before Paul and Christianity shattered the 
miserable system to fragments. Where, my friend, 
is the " progress" of your intellect? It immediately, 
when left to itself, sinks down lower than the dark- 
est of the Dark Ages to " Mars, Bacchus, Apollo, 



HERO-WOESHIP. 317 

nomina viroruin" — great names among school-boys, 
and great conquerors no doubt in their day, but not 
precisely personages to enact the deity. 

Inf. What higher representatives of Nature m her 
highest organization have ever existed ? Why, there- 
fore, should they not represent deity? 

Che. On pantheistic or idolatrous principles there 
is no more reason why they should not to the Greek 
or Roman heathen, than why a crocodile or a calf 
should not to a Negro heathen. Christians hold 
Pantheism in all its forms, from its lowest action in 
Boshmen to its highest in ancient Athens, to be un- 
mitigated idolatry — a prostitution of the immortal 
soul to things as inferior to itself as mud is to mind, 
or a coal-cellar to the sun. But let us for a moment 
suppose nature to be the Deity ; man, the highest 
genus of such deity ; and the hero species the highest 
species of man. Let us concede with the bluff Spar- 
tans, " If Alexander wish to be a God, let him be a 
God." We will take a modern instance, — Carlyle's 
favorite " hero," — Oliver Cromwell. If worshipped 
at all, it must be when he is living Oliver Cromwell, 
must it not ? 

Inf. Why? 

Chr. Do you object to the worship of the live hero? 

Inf. Few, during their lives, are acknowledged to 
be heroes. 

Chr. The recognition, it seems then, not the fact, 
makes your hero. Cromwell alive on a pedestal, and 
England on her knees to him, is too strong an hy- 
pothesis for the wildest Pantheist. It must be Crom- 
well dead, then, Cromwell like the Roman emperor 



318 HERO-WORSHIP. 

after his apotheosis. Infidelity is here again antici- 
pated in theory and practice. 

Inf. The apotheosis wonld be the recognition of 
this hero-being. 

Chr. Of the once Oliver Cromwell? How so? 
Where, after the dissolution of the material Oliver, 
would any Oliver be ; for, as an Infidel, you deny the 
immortality of any soul in Oliver? Oliver corporeal, 
meanwhile, has resolved into a palmful of dust, 
which is really all of Oliver left you to worship. 
You will not assert that dust to be the whole of the 
once hero ? Where then, or what then, according to 
this Pantheism, after death, is the Oliver whom it 
would heroize and deify? Nothing mortal or immor- 
tal but a little dust is left of him. It is not Oliver, 
nor a hero, but the sound of the letters by which the 
living Oliver was once signified, that your Infidelity 
would adore. 

Inf. But something not corporeal may have passed 
at his dissolution from the " hero" to animate another 
being, which, in that other being, is still what once 
was the animating principle of Oliver Cromwell. 

Chr. Immortal or mortal? Not mortal; other- 
wise, with Cromwell it would be dissolved. If im- 
mortal, you abandon Infidelity, and concede a soul 
within Cromwell which does not die with Cromwell. 

Inf. Being Cromwell once, it may, after his dis- 
solution, pass into and animate another organization 
of the same deity, — Nature, — remaining still cogni- 
zant of its previous life in Cromwell, and receiving 
emotions of happiness from the apotheosis of its hero 
state. 



HERO-WORSHIP. 319 

Chr. We pass already, then, from the infidelity of 
Pantheism to the immortality and metempsychosis 
of the soul — the old religion of the East and of Brit- 
ain, — Pythagoreanism, Buddhism, Druidism. Here, 
again. Infidelity is sadly forestalled — " Pereant qui 
ante nos — " The modern intellect of your champions 
has certainly marvellously little freshness of imagi- 
nation — nothing more novel than the Bardism of our 
British forefathers, nothing half so " splendide men- 
dax" as the Metamorphoses of Ovid. This step is, 
however, a far higher philosophy, an approximation 
towards the truth. Pantheism itself cannot make a 
hero without first finding him a soul — that is, with- 
out ceasing to be Pantheism and becoming Pytha- 
goreanism. Well, granting this transmissibility of 
the psyche or anima of life, where do you transfer 
Cromwell's — to some other Cromwell-like man ? 

Inf. It is impossible to suggest. 
. Chr. It may have passed into, and be at this mo- 
ment, the psyche of some very unheroic creature 
indeed ; but whether so or not, it has, at all events, 
ceased to be that part of the deity of nature once 
known and articulated as Oliver Cromwell. On 
either supposition, Pantheism or Druidism, Oliver 
has become a nonentity — the hero a vacuum : the 
hero-worship the worship of a sound, of sheer nothing- 
ness — thus literally realizing St. Paul's definition of 
an idol, "We know an Eidolon to be — nothing." 
This nothingness however is, it seems, the new 
" hero" of infidelity-worship. A national school-boy 
might pardonably smile at such nonsense. 



320 HERO-WOESHIP. 

Inf. It reads in these authors very diflerently to 
the light in which you place it. 

Chr. I do not doubt it : but in plain English it 
is as I have stated. The phraseology of these au- 
thors is intentionally adopted to obscure the truth 
and bewilder the soul. Obscurity of meaning, under 
a metaphysical mist of senseless verbiage, is their 
strength. Young men, therefore, rising from their 
perusal as young men will, without reducing their 
theories to distinct propositions, though they acquire 
no positive knowledge from their writings, neverthe- 
less imbibe a vague general feeling that Christianity 
is not " the thing for superior intellects." For the 
masses, for the mediocrities, it is excellent, it is indis- 
pensable, and must therefore be patronized and sup- 
ported. But their " intellect" places them above it. 
JSTow on this point of " intellect" the young are 
especially touchy : Infidelity gives them the oppor- 
tunity of claiming it by the easiest of all processes : 
they have only to adopt the reasoning — "The rejec- 
tion of Christianity as inferior to ' Intellect' is a 
proof of superior intellect: I reject it as inferior 
—therefore I am a superior intellect." Here are no 
college examinations to be gone through, but every 
young man can, by simply pronouncing himself an 
Infidel, raise himself in his own imagination to an 
equality with the minds which carry off the honors 
and wranglerships of the Universities. Thus there 
is established a most comforrable understanding be- 
tween the man and his '^ intellect," on principles of 
mutual consideration, and charity of no ordinary 



HERO-WORSHIP. 321 

kind. By this argument indeed the whole heathen 
world — Islamites, Buddhists, Chinese, Savages, Afri- 
cans — have all the " intellect" entirely to them- 
selves. Christendom and Christians are the inferior 
mind-caste. Is that, think you, the fact ? 

Inf, The heathens have never known Christianity. 

Chr. Nor has one in a hundred of these men. 
We have seen how reckless Newman is in his allega- 
tions about the very texts of Scripture. It is well 
known that the great Infidel of the last century, Vol- 
taire, confessed he had never in his lifetime read the 
New Testament. His attacks upon it were as if a 
man who has never mastered the first definitions of 
Euclid should spend fifty years in arguing against 
mathematics. 

Inf. I am not amenable to such imputation. Here 
is the Bible. 

Chr. And here are forty or fifty anti-Bibles. 
Which have you studied most — the one or the fifty — 
the accused or the accusers ? 

Inf. I determined to read both sides, and form my 
own conclusions. 

Chr. Most fair and judicious. But why confine 
the question to one point — that between the books ? 

Inf. Explain. 

Chr. Christianity is something much broader, 
much higher than the Bible. Christianity is the liv- 
ing presence of God in Christ — of God the Holy 
Spirit — in the spirits of men. He comes to and 
dwells in these spirits by ways of which the Bible is 
only a record, or at best but a mental or literary chan- 
nel. The Bible cannot preach, baptize, pray, admin- 

14^ 



322 FKAGMENTARY VIEW OF 

ister the Eucharist, or the ordinances, or be the liv- 
ing priest or the living Church to any man. It was 
never intended of Christ to be such— it was to His 
living priesthood, not to the I^ew Testament written 
thirty years afterwards by certain members of that 
priesthood, He said, " Go, teach and baptize all na- 
tions — I am with you always." To confound the 
province of the Bible, as the record of the Church, 
with the living Church itself is the great error 
of all schismatics. I would have the Bible in 
the hands of every Christian, as I would have the 
Army Manual in the hands of every soldier — but the 
Manual is not the army, nor the Bible the Chris- 
tian Church. As reading the Manual will not make 
a soldier ; or Aristotle on poetry, a poet ; or Locke 
on logic, a reasoner; or Grotius on statesmanship, 
a statesman — so neither will the possession or 
reading of the Bible make a Christian. As the 
soldier, the poet, the reasoner, the statesman, are, 
though readers, something far more and above mere 
readers of the Manual, of Aristotle, of Locke, of 
Grotius — so is the Christian something much higher 
than a mere reader of the Bible. The operation of 
the Spirit of God on the souls of men is not limited 
to the Bible ; there are higher and more universal 
channels of grace which have, in all ages, carried the 
work and blessing of God with them on the nations 
which received them. Europe, for instance, was 
converted by the Church, not by the Bible — the 
modern savage is converted by the missionary, not 
by the Scriptures. And this is strictly in accordance 
with the way and promise of Christ ; were it otlier- 



CHRISTIANITY BY INFIDELS. 323 

wise, what need of the organization of the Church, 
of bishops, priests, deacons, missionaries, at all, when 
dead print and paper could as \vell do the work now 
consigned and commanded, and only blessed by 
Christ when done by living souls to living souls? 
But Infidelity does not seem capable of viewing 
Christianity in other than two of its aspects — its Bible 
and its Priesthood. On these, as I suppose, its most 
vulnerable points, you manoeuvre the whole hostile 
forces at your command. If you can hit upon appar- 
ent literary contradictions in the former, or point to 
moral contradictions between profession and prac- 
tice in the latter, you deem the question with Chris- 
tianity itself settled. Now the truth of Christianity, 
as the power and will of God to the soul of man, does 
not, in the first place, depend on the perfect accu- 
racy, or supposed inaccuracy of the writings of Sts. 
Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Peter, Paul, James. 
Could errors be detected in them, they would no more 
affect the truths of the religion under the inspiration 
of which they wrote, than the errors in the ephemeris 
of astronomers aff*ect the truths of the science 
under the teaching and discoveries of which they 
write. Could Infidelity, by any means prove errors 
in the record, it would still, before it succeeded in 
affecting the truth of God Himself, have to encounter 
and explain the Power of God carrying out this 
truth in the conversion of ages and nations without 
the record. Extinguish the Scriptures entirely, 
which convey to us the knowledge of tlie fact that 
Christ said to His Church, ''I am with you always," 
the truth and power of that Promise is not extin- 



324: FRAGMKNTARY YIEW OF 

guished with the extinction of its record. The record 
might perish : Christ Himself would still be with 
His Church, would still prepare its way, and turn the 
hearts of men to the wisdom of salYation. The Scrip- 
tures, or the records of the Church, were for ages 
comparatiYely unknown to the world ; but the action 
and ordinances of Christ and His salvation have 
never for a moment ceased their career, or failed of 
their promised effect. The transference of the power 
and glory of Christ Himself to the written record of 
the Church, is as gross a sin on the part of schis- 
matics, as is the same transference by the Roman 
Catholic Church to the mother of Jesus Christ. 
Their Bibliolatry, indeed, is a lower species of idol- 
atry, because it degrades Christ more than Mariolatry 
does. The Roman Catholic gives the glory of Christ 
to the Virgin Mother, the schismatic to the Book of 
his disciples : of the two, the latter is the worse er- 
ror — a book is inferior to a woman ; and to idolatrize 
a book is worse than to idolatrize a woman. Nor, in 
the second place, does the truth of Christianity, as the 
Spiritual Power of God, depend on the moral or 
immoral Hycs of its ministers, any more— to follow up 
our first illustration — than the truths of astronomy 
depend on the moral or immoral characters of Gal- 
ileo, Newton, Tycho Brahe, Kepler, Hinde. Sup- 
posing all the astronomers who have ever lived to 
have been morally objectionable characters, the sub- 
lime realities of astronomy itself would remain as 
true as ever. The immorality of man does not affect 
the reality of either the physical or spiritual Truths 
of God. It may, and often does, turn those realities 



CHRISTIANITY BY INFIDELS. 325 

against himself, but it does not destroy them. All 
men may be liars, says St. Paul ; their being so would 
in no degree affect the existence of any one of the 
truths of God. What should we think of the mariner 
who, because manv men of science have been also 
men of yicious indulgences, refused to use the com- 
pass which science lias discovered ? The sailor prac- 
tically exclaims, '^ The morals of scientific men have 
nothing to do between me and my compass. Is the 
compass they have found and given me in itself true 
and trustw^orthy ? I sail and navigate, not by their 
morals, but by their compass." So Infidelity may 
readily prove that thousands of Christians, priests 
and laymen indifferently, — for that which excludes a 
priest, will exclude also a layman from heaven, their 
baptismal vow being one and the same to the Lord 
of Heaven, — have led base and objectionable lives 
— how does that admitted fact touch the truth of 
Christianity itself? The objection, indeed, refutes 
itself. For how know you such lives to be sinful 
and immoral ? Where is your standard of judgment ? 
" Oh !" you reply, '' Christianity itself." Thus it is 
by the teaching of Christianity itself, that the ob- 
jector is enabled to ascertain what is in accordance, 
w-hat is not, with sound morality. Christianity is 
the light by w^hich your eye thus sees ; because it 
exposes sad flaws in men professing Christianity, you 
strangely turn round upon the light itself, as if it w^ere 
the cause of the very deficiencies it reveals, and which, 
w^ithout its beams, would perhaps appear very virtues 
and excellencies to the darkness of your natural mind. 
Inf. But there ought to be uniformity between a 
Christian's profession and his life. 



326 PROFESSIO]^ AND PRACTICE. 

Chr. What Christian denies so trite a truism? 
But you are not, I think, aware of the admission 
involved in your dictum. Why should there be 
uniformity in a Christian's life and practice ? 

Inf. It stands to reason there ought to be agree- 
ment between a man's religion and his practice of it. 

Chr. Does it so? Let us see. An East Indian 
Thug professes murder as the sacrament of his reli- 
gion. The religion of murder by strangulation, as 
a sacrifice to the goddess Khalya, is his profession. 
Ought his practice to agree with his profession ? 

Inf. How can you propose such a question ? 

Chr. On the general principle you lay down of 
consistency between every man's religious profession 
and practice ; why should it not ? 

Inf. Because the practice is murder. 

Chr. His profession does not consider it such : 
with him it is religion, not murder. The fact is 
notorious. 

Inf. His religion is a lie, and the practice of it a 
high crime. 

Chr. You would not extend toleration to it ? 

Inf. I would exterminate it. 

Chr. Without mercy ? 

Inf. Without mercy ; for it would be the extrem- 
est cruelty to India to tolerate for a day such a mur- 
derous religion as Thngism. 

Chr. And if all India were abandoned to Thug- 
ism — seeing a nation wholly corrupt cannot be cor- 
rected and reformed by aught of good in itself — how 
would you proceed then against Thugism ? 

Inf. Asia and the world must be saved from the 
extension of so destructive and pernicious a super- 



PROFESSION AND PRACTICE. 327 

stition. We must undertake its destruction our- 
selves. 

Chr. But we are not Indians — we are foreigners 
and conquerors in India. 

Inf. What of that? It is incumbent on every 
nation to extirpate a superstition, which, if not sum- 
marily dealt with, would depopulate the earth. 

Chr. It appears to me, then, that you are quite 
prepared to re-enact and justify, in the nineteenth 
century, the wars of Joshua and the Israelites against 
the Canaanites and their murderous religion in old 
time — only the Jews professed to act under special 
commission from God : you, thinking such commis- 
sion superfluous against Thugism, are ready to pro- 
ceed on your own authority. How soon the Infidel 
becomes the self-commissioned Joshua ! But we will 
pass that by as a very common incident in Infidel 
history. If the Thug's religion and practice were 
consistent, you Avould order such a thorough-grained 
miscreant to be hanged — as they do hang them — on 
the first tree. 

Inf. Certainly — all nations, all laws, would sanc- 
tion the execution. 

Chr. Again. In the Feejee and other Polynesian 
Islands cannibalism is openly and undisguisedly a 
profession : an invitation to a stranger to a cannibal 
feast is the highest mark of distinction which can be 
paid him. What is here to be condemned, if it be 
not the consistency between a horrible profession 
and a horrible practice ? 

Inf. Proceed. 

Chr. Let us return home. In our English cities 



328 PKOFESSION AND PKACTICE. 

there are thousands of unhappy creatures avowing 
as their profession theft and prostitution. The hor- 
ror here again consists in the agreement of their 
practice with their profession. The commencement 
of reformation w^ould consist in the first act of down- 
right inconsistency between the two. 

Inf. Evidently. 

Chr. We should pronounce the man mad who 
praised a professed bravo, burglar, courtezan, canni- 
bal, for living in keeping with his or her profession. 
The brutality and sliame lie in the very fact that, 
however fearful the profession is, the individual's 
practice is in consistency with it. 

Inf. That position cannot be questioned. 

Che. Does it, then, stand to reason that there 
should universally be consistency between a man's 
profession and his practice ? 

Inf. Clearly not universally. 

Chr. You would think it a good sign, if any one 
of these individuals began to act contrary to his pro- 
fession. Take, again, the Turk. He, acting in per- 
fect consistency with his religion, purchases human 
beings for money, destroys all statues and paintings, 
spits upon all Giaours, and would, if he dare, thrust 
his sword into the man who refuses the Koran. Which 
would be right, consistency or inconsistency between 
faith and practice in his case ? 

Inf. Inconsistency. 

CuR. Why, again, in all ages, have very many 
men, in all false religions, been better than their 
religions? It is because they were fortunately the 
very reverse of being consistent with their profes- 



PROFESSION AND PRACTICE. 329 

sions — professions, the honor of which was " in the 
breach, not the observance." Now, how comes it 
that you would, in all these and similar cases, account 
inconsistency a virtue, but that you impute it to a 
Christian as a scandal and reproach ? 

Inf. I see jour scope. 

Chr. The beauty and holiness of Christianity as 
the standard and guide of human life are thus the 
very things you take for granted, before you can urge 
the Christian's inconsistency in practice with such a 
profession as a reproach to himself. For the moral 
or spiritual knowledge, which enables the Infidel to 
address a reproach to a Christian, he is himself 
indebted to the light of Christianity. The truth, 
then, is this — the more contradictory every man's 
practice is to a false profession or religion in that 
wherein it is false, the better for that man's nature. 
The more contradictory it is to the only true, the 
only elevating religion, the worse and more disgrace- 
ful is it to his nature. Your objection, therefore, to 
Christianity, on the score of inconsistency of life 
in Christians, subverts your Infidelity. For why 
should a Christian be a Christian, or inconsistency 
in practice with Christianity in profession be a re- 
proach, except on the ground that Christianity is 
indeed that God-delivered law, between which and 
the life of our souls there should be as little incon- 
sistency as possible ? Your objection assumes this: 
what becomes, then, of your Infidelity ? But further, 
should you, foreseeing this necessary inference, hark 
back, the form of the question would stand thus : — 
you, as an Infidel, believe Christianity an impo- 



330 CHRISTIANITY AND THE PEOPLES. 

sition : you reproach a Christian for not bein -^^g 
he professes, for not acting up to the full n Ire- 
ments of the imposition. How is it that you, who 
hold that every Christian professes a falsehood, blame 
him because his life is not in agreement with such 
falsehood ? Should you not rather, on your admis- 
sion made above, approve and praise him ? Where, 
herein, is your own consistency as an Infidel ? 

Inf. I must abandon this ground of opposition as 
untenable. But I still insist that men are deterred 
from being Christians, more by the unchristian lives 
of professing Christians, than by all other causes 
united. 

Chr. Weak men are ; men who fear but do not 
wish Christianity true, are ; men who desire an ex- 
cuse for not being Christians, are ; but all these and 
other such-like minds are after all few and unim- 
portant, in comparison with the vast masses in all 
ages whose common-sense has informed them that 
the reproach of a man not acting like a Christian is 
the most universal of all confessions to the truth, 
the obligations, and the necessity of Christianity 
itself. Yet none of these robust, strait-thinking, 
uncloseted multitudes ever expected a Christian to 
be without inconsistencies, or alleged such inconsist- 
encies as an argument against the faith. Why? 
Christianity, itself, by one of its first doctrines, that 
every man is in many things a defaulter, enabled them 
to point to every one lialjle to such reproach, to every 
man, that is, without exception as a proof of — what? 
— of the untruthfulness ? — no — of the universal truth- 
fulness of the religion which had thus forewarned 



CHRISTIANITY AND THE PEOPLES. 331 

sions -iiistriicted them. Suppose, therefore, appar- 
ent u irepaneies here and there in a record extending 
over four thousand years ; let the precise line of de- 
markation between the fallibility and infallibility of 
the apostles and evangelists be as yet in dubio ; let 
every priest be denounced as a spiritual bugbear to 
the laity ; let the priesthood of Christ itself be pro- 
scribed as an imposition, a conspiracy, or '' a craft," 
yet here are the enormous masses of your favorite 
human nature content from century to century to 
become, to believe, to live, and die as Christians ; 
each conscious to himself of more or less inconsist- 
ency between his life and the holy faith he pro- 
fesses ; each in his heart believing and revering that 
holy religion the more from the very distance between 
his practice and the holiness of its commands. Drop 
therefore the Scriptures and the priesthood. Answer 
the laities, answer the peoples. Objections to the 
Bible and the priesthood have been pretty much the 
same in all ages ; but with the peoples they have 
never told against Christianity itself; they have in- 
deed only elicited increased efforts to obtain a better 
executive, a more active administration of the pure 
religion itself. How come the objections which the 
peoples have always treated with practical contempt 
to carry any weight with philosophers ? How comes 
philosophy itself to be the thing practically most 
despised, and Infidelity the thing practically most 
abhorred and feared by the peoples ? Here we have, 
as you observed, the millions of the Continent, and 
of England, wholly or partially devoting fifty-two 
days in the year to the sanctifying of one only of the 



332 CHEISTIANITY AKD THE PEOPLES. 

great ordinances of Christianity. Let philosophy try 
to get them together one such day, it cannot ; the 
peoples in fact despise it, why ? — because all that is 
worth having or knowing in philosophy is theirs 
already in an infinitely higher form than philosophers 
understand or present it. A ranting preacher dilating 
to living souls on the destiny of souls, will gather a 
greater audience than the greatest of mere philoso- 
phers, lecturing on the properties of birds, beasts, 
fossils, metals, minerals, oxygen, and hydrogen. The 
most illiterate missionary w^ill, with a few rough, 
broad enunciations of faith, open living fountains up 
in the hearts of his hearers, of which that philosophy 
which pretends to be " knowledge" has never known 
the existence or tested the power. If the peoples be 
right, what estimation must be formed of all philoso- 
phy apart from Christianity ? If such philosophy be 
right, it only pierces Christianity through the sides 
of collective human nature, of the peoples which, 
according to Pantheism, are the aggregate of deity 
itself In what a position Infidelity herein places its 
advocates ! So strange as scarcely to admit of descrip- 
tion. Infidelity is herein opposed to that which it 
declares to be Deity itself in a high form, human 
nature. Human nature, en masse^ will have Chris- 
tianity as the truth of God and the guarantee of im- 
mortality ; over every grave it perseveres in the 
midst of tears in looking up to heaven, in holding 
fast its faith in the word and honor of God, in 
sobbing forth the unconquerable conviction of its 
soul, '' He is not dead, he sleepeth ; he will wake 
again to the life eternal." Infidelity, opposed to its 



CHRISTIANITY AND THE PEOPLES. 333 

own deity, declares all tliis false ; but this deity is 
herein Christian, and so, to crown the absurdity, the 
faith which Infidelity denies is the very faith which 
the deity of Infidelity — poor human nature — persists 
in believing and accepting as the truth. Confess this 
to be what Horace calls " insaniens sapientia," phi- 
losophy that has lost its senses and run mad. 

Inf. Well, we have diverged from the topic we 
were engaged upon, the extirpation of the Canaan- 
ites by the command of Jehovah. 

Chr. You solved the objection to it yourself, I think, 
by insisting on the extermination of the Thugs by 
England. But let us revert to it again : we have 
examined it as an instance of the execution of the 
legal justice of God on national criminality. 

Let us now^ substitute your own view of Nature as 
deity, and observe how she acts. By Nature we con- 
tinue, I suppose, to mean the invisible and visible 
order of present existence — existence in action. And 
this, according to you, is the Deity. In its highest 
development, human and hero nature, we have 
already seen what the notion leads to ; let us proceed 
to briefly analyze it in its lower manifestations. 
There are such things as war, famine, pestilence, 
epidemics, cholera, yellow fever, small-pox? 

Inf. Yes. 

Chr. Have not whole tribes been exterminated ; 
whole nations and continents depopulated by their 
action ? 

Inf. Undoubtedly. 

Chr. What causes war? 

Inf. There are many causes of war. 



334 CHRISTIANITY AND THE PEOPLES. 

Chr. War between human beings must be in- 
duced by causes innate in human beings : ambition, 
ignorance, misconception, pride, rapacity, hatred, 
honor, glory, self-preservation, lust of aggrandize- 
ment. The causes of war must pre-exist in those 
engaged in war. The most fertile land is thus not 
the cause, but the object of w^ar; the desire for its 
retention or possession in the human mind is the 
motive cause. 

Inf. Conceded. 

Chr. We have thus, then, your highest genus of 
Deity, man, causing from age to age in every country 
of the world that which, when done in two solitary 
and very peculiar instances, by the order of Jehovah, 
you object to as irreconcilable with the true idea of 
deity. Your highest type of deity has, nevertheless, 
always been, and still is, on the grandest scale, doing 
this very thing — making war. The act of justice 
against the Canaanites destroyed, perhaps, one million 
of people. Tour deity, nature in man, has probably 
destroyed — to say nothing of the objects in view — 
not less than a thousand millions. This is a fact of 
Nature ; this Nature you hold to be the Deity, it is 
therefore a fact of the Deity ; yet you say, to do one- 
thousandth part of what your acknowledged deity 
has done, is irreconcilable with the true idea of deity. 
If your objection, therefore, is valid as against the 
revealed idea of God, it is one thousand times more 
valid against nature as God, or as the expression of 
God. If it tells against Scripture, how much more 
against your own substitute for Scripture ? 

Inf. Your induction strikes me as forcible. 



WORSHIP OF NATURE. 335 

Chr. But if you affirm " war" in man to be in- 
variably wrong, the dilemma which follows is this, — 
nature, your deity, is and has been in its highest 
type a wrong thing ever since it assumed that type. 
Can the bathos of Infidel intellect descend lower ? If 
war is evil, your deity, nature, is and ever has been 
evil. If your deity, on the other hand, inflicts this 
evil as a penalty only, as something external to it- 
self, how can you object to the same infliction from 
the hands of Jehovah as a penalty against sin ? 

Inf. I cannot so far take exception to your argu- 
mentative process. 

Chr. Let us descend to another still lower phase 
of this deity, nature. Is the plague, the yellow 
fever, the cholera, " nature ?" Are they also parts 
of the Deity ? 

Inf. They are results of nature. 

Chr. How? 

Inf. a stagnant swamp, a mephitic sewerage, an 
atmosphere of close, corrupted human breaths will 
generate or foster plague or cholera. 

Chr. Suppose we grant such and similar conditions 
will generate it, which is, I think, more than I am 
warranted in doing. Foster and invite it they do ; 
generate it, I think, they never do. Is the cholera 
in itself an evil ? 

Inf. Certainly. 

Chr. There are certain results then which Nature 
itself brings on, that are in themselves unmitigated, 
devastating, world-wide evils. Your deity, then, is, in 
some of its phases, the reverse of beneficent or mer- 
ciful ; in some of its most active and extensive forms, 



336 WORSHIP OF NATURE. 

it is purely an evil deity. ISTow Christians admit 
the existence of evil in the creation of God: its 
action often perplexes us, but no Christian has ever 
said, as Infidelity does, that this evil was God, or in 
any sense part of God. Yet at the very time you cite 
the existence of evil, as irreconcilable with the fact 
of an all-beneficent Creator, your own philosophy 
compels you to infer evil itself to be not a thing 
temporal or probationary of good, but part of the 
Deity itself. As long as there is deity, so long, 
by your reasoning, must evil itself be co-existent. 
Thus, again, is the worst half of Zoroaster plagia- 
rized by the " Intellect" of Infidelity ; the worst,— for 
in the ancient Persian creed, Ahriman finally per- 
ishes, and Oromasdes alone is eternal. In your mod- 
ern Pantheism, evil or the devil is both part of and a 
co-existent eternal with God. It is thus impossible 
to carry on any process of reasoning on Infidel 
premises, without being obliged to enunciate the 
most blasphemous, as well as the most ridiculous 
deductions. 

Inf. But you are not, I think, stating this part of 
the question fairly. 

Chr. Let me hear, then, your view. 

Inf. The plague, cholera, and all such sweeping 
maladies are results of nature in a certain state : 
under certain conditions of nature they are certain 
to be evolved. But it by no means follows that that 
condition of nature which is destructive of the 
genus, man, is therefore an evil in itself. It 
may be absolutely necessary to the production of 
greater good. Quoad us, as it were, it may be 



WORSHIP OF NATURE. 337 

evil : quoad greater beings than we, it may be 
good. 

Chr. Man, you stated, was the highest genus, 
heroes the highest species of the highest genus, of 
the deity Nature. What greater beings can there 
be? 

Inf. Well. But I now modify the expression. 
There may, I say, be higher forms of existence than 
any hero species of man. Man may suffer for the 
good of them, as animals do for the good of man. 

Chr. Conceding your modification, how do j^ou 
apply the principle of it in the present case ? 

Inf. It follows that hereafter, even by and through 
the destruction of man, beings greater than man may 
be formed out of the human elements themselves. 
The grain-food is in the earth before it is corn : the 
life is in the mother before it is in the child — so that 
may be in man which is the life and the food of 
another and higher being out of man. 

Chr. Be it so. But this is Infidelity abandoned, 
not maintained. The principle you here lay down 
is akin to that of the Resurrection — very like that 
which Plato maintained, that death is the mother 
of life. 

Inf. That which appears and is felt by us to be 
evil, may in reality only be the death-process of 
nature to a higher life, a greater good. 

Chr. And you include such agencies as the cholera 
or plague in this death-process to a higher life ? 

Inf. Why not ? Who knows ? What is the de- 
struction of a few regiments, when the destinies of 
future nations are being elaborated ? What the ex- 

15 



338 WORSHIP OF NATURE. 

tirpation of a few millions, when the eyes of all 
mankind are to be opened, through their destruc- 
tion, to the great sanitary laws of Nature ? 

Chr. Is not your Infidelity here stealing an argu- 
ment from Calvinism ? 

Inf. What I mean is this : in one sense cholera 
and the plague may be termed the effects of certain 
material conditions of nature — the swamp, the pois- 
onous ditch, the irrespirable air. But Nature never 
intended man to live under such conditions. If he 
attempts it, he dies. The peculiar process by which 
he is decomposed under such conditions, we call the 
typhus, pestilence, cholera. The trying to live, under 
such conditions, is a perpetual violation of the laws 
of nature : he necessarily dies : the nature which he 
violates by doing what he is by his whole constitu- 
tion forbidden to do, kills him for the violation. 
Nature, by his death, thus avenges the infringement 
of her own laws. The next generation, seeing the 
effects of the infringement, observe those laws : they 
escape the cholera and the plague : they are so far, 
therefore, a healthier and a higher race than those 
which perished. 

Chr. And this Nature is your deity : this process 
is the penal process of such deity? 

Inf. And is it not visibly true ? Does not all sci- 
ence prove that by such devastating maladies as the 
yellow fever and the cholera. Nature is, after all, 
doing nothing more than avenging man's violation 
of her laws, as they bear upon himself? 

Chr. And is she right ? 

Inf. Why — what pure absurdity it would be to say 



WORSHIP OF NATURE. 339 

she was wrong. She must be right, because she is 
Nature. 

Chr. But her victim, man, is nature also — and 
the highest organization of nature. 

Inf. He suffers in this instance, because he vio- 
lates the very laws of that nature of which he is the 
highest organization. Why does his nature, consti- 
tuted to live on the free, wholesome, unbarriered 
earth, and to breathe the pure unconfined air of 
heaven, sink itself into that of a noisome marsh- 
reptile, burrowing in filth, and imbibing a venomous 
atmosphere at every pore ? If he will degrade him- 
self into such vermin, the law of his nature extermi- 
nates him and his race. 

Chr. Nature avenges the violation of her laws by 
the infliction of the most terrible penalties, at the 
cost of millions of human lives, from India to New 
Orleans, from Batavia to England. Her penalties 
in fact, gird the world. She is your deity. How 
then can you, who contend for such acts as insepa- 
rable from deity, object them to the character of 
God, as revealed in Scripture ? If certain such acts 
were not revealed as His, there would ensue, by your 
reasoning, a mutilation in His character or attri- 
butes as the Deity. Your objection here again tends 
to confirm the truth of those Scriptures. Your deity. 
Nature, perpetually avenges the infraction of her 
laws by the most destructive and fearful punish- 
ments : she must be, you allege, necessarily right. 
God avenges the infraction of His laws — of man's 
degrading himself from his original state to the level 
of such vermin as you describe — by one or two 



340 WORSHIP OF NATURE. 

signal instances of judicial execution. You say it 
cannot be : it is inconsistent with all true ideas of 
deity. ITature, from century to century, in every 
land, and under all conditions of life, is paying man 
back according to his folly, blindness, stupidity, 
ignorance, perversity, criminality. He whom Chris- 
tians believe the God of l^ature, reveals Himself as 
doing once or twice what ITature, with the most 
inflexible impartiality, is at all times doing towards 
every man, or aggregate of men, that take it upon 
them — in ignorance or not— to infringe her laws. 
God, you contend, never could give such a command 
as the extirpation of the Canaanites : whatever being 
gave it could not be God. You, then, immediately 
append : E'ature invariably avenges the violation of 
her laws. She admits no excuse, makes no allowance 
for ignorance. It is the very ignorance which places 
itself in antagonism to her laws, that sweeps popula- 
tions away — what cares Nature for that ? She slays 
her millions : if she did not, if she permitted any 
condition of the mind to be pleaded as a right of 
exemption from obedience to her fiat and precepts, 
she would not be deity. Observe what you exchange 
— a God of rare severity, for a deity that never, in 
one instance, overlooks a violation of its laws. If 
England choose to put itself in a position of hostility 
to such laws, it must perish as inevitably as would 
a horde of naked savages. If England is content to 
remain under cholera conditions, the sword of the 
justice of nature will infallibly smite within her 
man, woman, and child, with equal indifference as 
within a clan of houseless Patagonians. And this 



WORSHIP OF NATURE. 341 

very fact of never sparing, never knowing what 
mercy is, you prefer as the clearest proof that it is 
deity. When God exercises, in one or two instances, 
the same power, that is the clearest proof He is no 
Deity. How can sense or consistency be extracted 
from such wild contradictions ? 

Inf. Nevertheless my view of Nature is right. 
She never does forgive: she forgives no one: she 
knows no distinctions : she is no respecter of per- 
sons : if a Shakspeare or a Wellington puts himself 
under cholera conditions, she would immolate him 
with the same stern indifference as she would the 
veriest savage on the face of the earth. There is 
something grand in such impartiality. 

Chr. Of the grandeur I say nothing. The fact is 
indisputable. But when a Christian professes to be- 
lieve " every soul that sinneth must die " — be it that 
of Shakspeare or a Hottentot — lo ! though the anal- 
ogy with the laws of Nature is complete, you demur 
admitting as a truth, with reference to God, what 
you strenuously contend for as truth in reference to 
Nature. Now, by comparing what Nature does by 
certain agencies to our bodies in the material world, 
with what God does by certain other agencies to our 
souls in the immaterial world, it is wonderful in how 
many respects faith is, after all, the extension of 
sight and vision. It is, indeed, the pure vision itself; 
it is real seeing ; for, as St. Paul expresses it, it is see- 
ing the invisible. In the present instance, how en- 
tirely Nature compels you on the evidence of science, 
and of your own sensible experiences, to recognize 
as facts of universal prevalency, the very principles 



342 WORSHIP OF NATURE. 

which you refuse to accept when embodied in the 
doctrines of Christianity. If such be the doctrines 
of Nature, they must, on your theory, be the doc- 
trines of the Deity. How much more, then, must 
that Christianity which revealed them in their high- 
est, that is, their spiritual form, ages before science 
discovered them in their lowest, be the religion of 
the Deity ? Thus, from whatever point we view the 
subject. Infidelity is driven by Nature itself into a 
faith which, if not Christianity, is in marvellous 
analogy with it. Marvellous, I mean, to you. To 
us who hold Nature and Christianity to be only the 
visible and invisible, the physical and spiritual reve- 
lations of one and the same Almighty Being, it is 
an additional proof of the identity of the principles 
of our faith with the truths that rule the material 
universe. 

Inf. But Christians appear to me to see more in 
Christianity than is really contained in it. 

Chr. Not so ; but the reverse. None has ever 
yet mastered Christianity in its fulness. In compar- 
ison, indeed, with Infidels, we do see more. New- 
ton saw more in the firmament than other people : 
a geologist sees more in a rock than other people : 
a botanist sees more in a field than other people : a 
physician sees more in a face than other peojDle. 
Every scientific man sees more than others in the 
subject-matter of his science. So is it with the 
Christian. But as Newton never professed to see 
more in his discoveries than the first breakings on 
the shore of the mind of the ocean of infinity, so the 
Christian, though comparatively he may know more 



MIRACLES AND SCIKNCE. 343 

than others of Christianity, never professes to know 
it absolutely further than in part. A spiritual 
science it is, the harmony of all the components of 
which shames the architecture of the heavens. A 
Christian may, therefore, see in Christianity — and 
truly — much that is invisible to the Infidel vision, 
which is affirming no more than that the mind which 
has long studied Nature, has its eyes opened to 
countless truths in that great field of research which 
entirely escape the observation of such as have never 
devoted their attention to the pursuit. 

Have you many more objections in reserve? 

Inf. You have directly or incidentally adverted to 
the greater number of those which appeared to me 
to be entitled to serious consideration. I shall concen- 
trate such as remain upon these two points. I take 
exception to the whole system of miraculous agen- 
cies recorded in your Scriptures, and I firmly refuse 
to admit the existence of such a state or place as 
Hell. 

Chr. We shall be able, perhaps, to deal with both 
points at once. You disbelieve the miracles of Scrip- 
ture. Let us specify some of the miracles of Nature, 
and see how far our faith or credulity in them ex- 
tends. Science proves, and we believe such miracles, 
for instance, as the following : 

The air is capable of solidification, liquefaction, and 
color. 

A pressure from " without" of fifty miles deep of 
such air surrounds the earth. 

Every adult supports a pressure on his own person 
of thirty thousand pounds' weight of this air. 



344 SCRIPTURE AND SCIENCE. 

Except for such an enormous compression from 
without man would explode. 

Except for this air sonnd and life, including within 
them reason and language, could not exist. 

Many plants breathe, perspire, propagate by sexual 
distinctions, and possess a circulation of sensitive 
life. 

The age of many trees, which are, as it were, the 
aristocracy of plants, exceeds four thousand years. 

There are, at least, no less than 70,000 distinct 
species of such trees and plants. 

The smallest insects are the architects by whom 
islands and continents have been built up out of the 
water. 

The Pyramids are constructed of stones formed of 
the concretions of minute shells of these insects ; and 
all the chalk hills and chalk strata of the world are 
nothing but their excrements and remains. 

Among land insects, the white ant and the bee have 
lived for thousands of years under hereditary insti- 
tutions of established loyalty and order. 

Others of these insects have thirty thousand 
eyes. 

There have existed tribes of frogs, lizards, flying 
dragons, equal in dimensions to bisons, hippopotami, 
elephants. 

The whole earth was once nothing but slime. 

The earth, fifty miles beneath its surface, is in a 
state of fiery fusion. 

The earth, and, as far as we can infer, nature itself, 
has been at least a dozen times destroyed and again 
created. 



SCRIPTURE AJS-D SCIENCE. 345 

K the earth were a little nearer the sun, it would 
be liquefied, and pass away " in smoke," by evapo- 
ration. 

If the earth were where any other planet is, or 
any other planet where the earth is, the whole solar 
system would be thrown back into chaos. 

The moon is a world destitute of all vital air, 
water, vegetation, and verdure — Si horror of un- 
breathing lifelessness. 

Mercury is a world where granite would instantly 
fuse. 

The sun attracts and discharges comets to and 
from distances of 70,000,000,000 miles from itself. 

The moon revolves round the earth, the earth 
round the sun, the sun round a centre in the Pleiades, 
that centre round some other, and so on from centre 
to centre, in the invisible Infinite. 

There are 18,000,000 such suns and systems as 
ours in the Milky Way alone. 

The nebulae, or sun-stars of Orion, give us light at 
a distance requiring 60,000 years for its transit. 

This light travels at the rate of 12,000,000 miles 
per minute. 

Beyond the furthest fields of telescopic vision there 
are other systems never to be visible to us on earth, 
because the light proceeding from them is, from 
their remoteness, decomposed in its transit before it 
reaches us. 

That part of the universe, the vision of which is 
commanded by the earth, is thus necessarily limited 
—it may not be 1,000,000,000th part of it. 

There are behind these physical worlds invisible 

15- 



346 SCRIPTURE AND SCIENCE o 

and semi-iniinaterial powers — heat, light, ether, gal- 
vanism, electricity, life. 

Here are a few articles selected from the creed of 
modern science — do you believe them ? 

Ikf. Ton have selected certain conclusions which 
scientific men accept as capable of demonstration. I 
do not, therefore, believe them — ^I know them to be 
true. 

Chr. Have you demonstrated them yourself? 

Inf. 'No. 

Chr. You accept them on the testimony of science 
and scientific philosophers ? 

Inf. I do. 

Chr. Such acceptance, I conceive, is faith or be- 
lief. Be that as it may, you confess them realities. 
We are now discussing ''the miraculous." Do the 
Scriptures or the Christian creed contain any article 
so "miraculous," or drawing so largely on the credu- 
lity of the world at large as many of these articles of 
science do on the unscientific world ? For instance, 
the first article of our Creed is, " I believe in God 
the Father Almighty." Whoever or whatever made 
and still regulates the universe, must be at least 
intellectual. We must admit the Creator of the 
intellect of man to be himself intellectual — must we 
not? 

Inf. Well. 

Chr. It is evident, also, the universe is taken care 
of — though not by man, your highest form. He, 
poor creature, is asleep — cannot do without sleep 
one-third the time his own earth goes round, every 



SCRIPTURE AND SCIENCE. 347 

twenty-four hours, on its own axis. Everywhere 
there exists that order and punctuality, the attain- 
ment of the knowledge of which makes science 
science. Without such pre-existent order, science — 
astronomy for instance — could not exist. 

Inf. Clearly not. 

Chr. The most natural title for human beings to 
adopt and use towards one who, for love, takes care 
of persons and things is a Father. That such a Father 
is the same with the Creator of the universe you do 
not, I suppose, deny. In judging of His Power by 
His works, — a few of which these articles of science 
have specified, — is it possible to demur to His being 
Almighty? Can we imagine any work or effect 
which the power that has thus already created, and 
is now sustaining the universe and its operations, 
cannot at His will produce ? 

Inf. We so far concur. 

Chr. In that case all objection to the miraculous 
or supernatural in Christianity falls at once to the 
ground ; nature is as full of the stupendous, the 
wonderful, the apparently incredible as the Scrip- 
tures. It is the ignorance, the gross ignorance of 
man, which, both in nature and the Scriptures, 
causes him to dream of such terms as " the incredi- 
ble, the impossible," as applicable to God. 

Inf. So far as the miraculous in facts is concerned, 
the creed of science draws heavier bills, perhaps, 
than the creed of Christianity on tlie bank of faith. 
If I rejected science on the score of its wonderful 
revelations of nature, I should be rejecting it for the 



348 SCRIPTURE AND SCIENCE. 

reasons which, of all others, ought to recommend it 
most fervidly to my acceptance — ^its grandeur and 
sublimity. 

Chr. Good ; nor do you, I think, reject the human 
facts of the life of Christ. 

Inf. I must admit them. 

Chr. And as a fact you are also obliged to admit 
the existence of the Catholic Church in the world, 
calling itself the kingdom of Christ. 

Inf. I am. 

Chr. With reference then to the other articles of 
our Creed, it is not the miraculous element in them 
to which you object? By the side, indeed, of the 
miracles of God in nature, they sound as plain and 
simple as it is well possible for Omnipotency to ex- 
hibit itself in action. ]S"either is there one of them 
which does not affect the being or well-being of man 
in his highest destinies, more than all the facts of all 
the physical sciences put together pretend to do. 

Inf. N^ature herself, I grant, throws any objection 
to Christianity on the ground of the miraculous out 
of court. But I contend that all these articles of 
science are demonstrable by infallilDle processes to 
be true, whereas there exists no such processes to 
demonstrate the truth of the articles of your creed. 
I do not object, therefore, to them because they are 
miraculous, but I deny them to be facts at all. 

Chr. You abandon, then, the anti-miracle ground ? 

Inf. Entirely. I take my position upon the non- 
existence of the facts alleged. 

Chr. Are these facts capable of demonstration by 
human evidence ? 



SCRIPTURE AND SCIENCE. 349 

Inf. Ah ! you would bring me, I perceive, into 
collision with Hume. 

Che. Perhaps so. Hume contends no amount of 
human evidence can verify a miracle. You, on the 
contrary, state the mere fact of a work being a 
miracle is no bar to its reception. 

Inf. Not to me, nor, I think, to any practical 
man. 

Chr. Because every practical man sees that Hume 
begs the whole question as to what nature is, and 
as to what a miracle is. His sophism is, — " A 
miracle is something contrary to the whole course of 
nature : any thing contrary to the whole course of 
nature is an impossibility ; no evidence can prove an 
impossibility: therefore no evidence can prove a 
miracle." By this process of reasoning there is not 
a single scientific discovery which might not before its 
achievement have been pronounced an impossibility, 
the accomplishment of which w^as not to be demon- 
strated by any amount of sensible evidence. Without 
a full and thorough knowledge of all the resources 
in nature, how can any man pronounce what is, or 
what is not, contrary to nature? This is the first 
great fallacy. If, on the other hand, we define 
nature as the known routine of physical laws on 
matter and men, then, again, the question as to 
whether such routine has ever been suspended, an- 
nulled, or modified, must be decided by evidence. 
The implied denial that miracles are a question of 
facts, and that facts must in every case be deter- 
mined by evidence, is Hume's second fallacy. 

Inf. Hume contends that such a statement as that 



350 SCRIPTURE AND SCIENCE. 

of the Resurrection cannot be proved by any amount 
of evidence, because it is opposed to all experience 
of nature. 

Chr. To whicli we reply, the Eesurrection, like 
every other fact, takes its stand upon its own evidence. 
And, secondly, we accept the fact proved by such 
evidence as in unison with innumerable other facts 
demonstrating the existence of a God absolutely su- 
preme above all the laws of nature, by whom alone 
nature and her laws are what they are. 

Inf. You ascend, thus, beyond Hume's reach. 

Chr. We do, just as the man of science ascends 
above the ploughman's reach. When he tells him 
that he supports on his own body 30,000 lbs. weight 
of atmospheric pressure, what would be the illiterate 
ploughman's reply ? '' It is contrary to all experience 
of nature ; neither he nor any one else had ever felt 
such a weight ; all the academies in Europe should 
not convince him contrary to his senses." Which 
would be right, science or the ploughman ? 

Inf. Science, of course. 

Chr. Again ; are geologists correct in stating that 
nature has repeatedly ceased to be what nature pre- 
viously was ? 

Inf. J suppose so. 

Chr. Nature, then, as constituted at present, is 
nothing more than perhaps the tenth or twentieth 
universal miracle which has been wrought by the 
Power above nature. 

Inf. In that case all present nature, considered 
with reference to the past, is a new miracle. 

Chr. Clearlv : was not the first creation of man 



SCRIPTURE AND SCIENCE. 351 

a complete innovation on previous nature? Com- 
paring A. M. 5858, with a. m. 1, are there not millions 
of miracles in the forms of men and women meeting 
our senses every day which had no previous existence 
whatever, except, as Plato and Newton would ex- 
press it, in the sensorium of the Deity ? 

Inf. Conceded. 

Chr. Present nature, then, is a new heaven and a 
new earth with new inhabitants, as compared to 
precedent nature. 

Inf. According to modern geology. 

Chr. How many such creations have taken place 
in the revolutions of time ? 

Inf. Perhaps seven. 

Chr. Perhaps seventy and seven. Tou swallow 
with the utmost complacency the new heavens and 
new earths of science ; you pride yourself on knowing 
all about the changes of geology — it is science — it is 
shameful in these days to be ignorant of such doc- 
trines ! But when the Scriptures propound a cog- 
nate truth, forthwith you exclaim, " Impossible i in- 
credible ! " 

Inf. What cognate truth in this respect ? 

Chr. That the present heaven and the present 
earth will make place for a new heaven and a new 
earth, and that new creatures, men celestialized and 
spiritualized, will be resident therein. In ten or a 
dozen such changes past you do believe. In one 
more such change to come, though it be in perfect 
analogy with the past as elucidated by science, you 
not only decline to believe, but reject it as an im- 
possible miracle. Is that which by the evidence of 



352 SCRIPTURE AND SCIENCE. 

science, has already taken place times indefinite, an 
impossibility to take place again ? Is it not rather, 
by all preceding analogies, a possibility which is sure 
to become once more a fact ? " The heavens shall 
be dissolved and the elements shall melt, but we, ac- 
cording to his promise, look for new heavens and a 
new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness." ^ 

Inf. But such a declaration as this of St. Peter's 
would thus be as much science as prophecy. 

Chr. Exclude the words, " wherein reigneth right- 
eousness," it may be both. What prevents God 
from delivering as prophecy a fact which after-ages 
discover to be also in entire unison with His govern- 
ment of the universe in antecedent periods? The 
next great change will be — because righteousness 
will reign supreme and alone therein — the consum- 
mation of all the preceding changes, the final form 
in which they will all " rest," — the eternal sabbath of 
creation passing on to it through successive stages of 
travail, each like the mother producing out of itself 
its own future existence. For this very reason change 
will cease, and immutability begin. 

Inf. To that conclusion no one would object. If 
the future heavens were inclusive of every sentient 
being who has ever existed, I should be well dis- 
posed to believe the religion which taught so glori- 
ous and blissful a state of finality. But Christianity 
proposes an immutable hell as well as an immutable 
heaven. Eather, therefore, than accept one on the 
condition of accepting both, I reject both together. 

1 2Pet.m. 12. 



HELL. 353 

Chr. Toil do not believe in the existence of hell ? 

Inf. No, the supposition is too horrible. 

Chr. Do you disbelieve it as a place ? 

Inf. I disbelieve it in toto. 

Chr. What say you then to the existence of Mer- 
cury ? Is not that planet, compared to ours, a world 
of fire? 

Inf. But there is no life there. 

Chr. How know you that ? 

Inf. If there be, it must be attempered to an 
atmosphere of fire. 

Chr. Forever? 

Inf. I do not say forever ; but if attempered it 
must be life without pain. 

Chr. It is possible, and the reverse is possible. 

Inf. How ? 

Chr. Men settle in the swamps of the Mississippi : 
such and such is the climate. Do they become at- 
tempered to it ? 

Inf. Yes. 

Chr. Without suffering effects which adhere to 
them as long as they live, be it ten or forty years ? 

Inf. The constitution must of course be in some 
way permanently a sufferer. 

Chr. It is possible, then, that a world may exist 
the climate of which is itself a pain-infiicting medium 
on every object endowed with life under its action. 
We have before our eyes, in Mercury, the fact that a 
world of fire comparatively near us does exist in 
creation. Hell, therefore, considered simply as '' a 
place," a place of fire, is quite in analogy with the 
facts of astronomy. The fact physical is all which 



354 HELL. 

astronomy can teach ; sucli teaching, so far as it 
goes, confirms the declaration of Scripture. 

Inf. But hell is generally believed by the mass of 
Christians to be beneath the earth. 

Chr. If there be a hell, it can matter little where 
it is. But the popular belief may place it rightly. 

Inf. Nonsense ! a hell under the earth ! 

Chr. The earth is about 8000 miles in diameter. 
Fifty miles below its crust, if physical philosophy 
and science are to be received as authorities, granite 
can only exist in a state of fusion, " it melts with 
fervent heat." What must be its temperature one 
thousand miles below ? 

Inf. It may be a vast hollow. 

Chr. True, of fire and fusion, which approaches, I 
apprehend, very near the immemorial idea of hell. 

Inf. But I do not believe philoso23hy and science 
on this point. What more than we can they know 
of the interior of the globe ? 

Chr. Or, as the ploughmen say, How can they 
more than we know that we carry 30,000 lbs. of air 
upon our backs ? Well, you must settle such points 
with them. My statement is that science, be it 
right or wrong, corroborates not only Scripture on 
the fact of there being a world of fire, but the an- 
cient idea of the whole of mankind, heathen and 
Christian, that such a world is the centre or abyss of 
our earth. 

Inf. Not where souls are imprisoned and pun- 
ished — science is guiltless of that addition. 

Chr. Science in this, as in every other instance, 
can only walk up to a certain height with Chris- 



HELL. 355 

tianity. There Christianity expands her wings and 
directs her flight to reahns it is permitted science 
only to gaze far off upon, while her sister of Divine 
birth is lost to her vision in the ever-rising ascents 
of her native eternity. But so far as the mortal 
sister can go, she walks hand in hand with the white- 
robed daughter of God. The Scriptures reveal a world 
of fire. Science, is it possible ? " Not only possible, 
it is a common fact in the systems of the universe." 
Popular faith places hell beneath our feet, in the 
centre of the earth. Is it true, O Science ? ^' It is true 
that such a place as hell is popularly supposed to be 
exists in the interior of the earth ; as to its con- 
nection wdth the future state of man I know noth- 
ing." 

Lsrr. Science then fails you on the very point on 
which you need its evidence. 

Chk. Not so. You, as an Infidel, denied the pos- 
sibility of the existence of hell as a place at all. 
Science refutes your position by showing there are 
such worlds as correspond in substance, and one 
beneath our feet both in substance and locality with 
the popular religious idea of the nature of hell. 

Inf. Well, grant so far ; grant even the interior 
of our own globe to be an abyss of fire and fusion ; 
how can a soul suff'er pain ? How can such a place 
be one of sufi*ering, penal or purgatorial, to a soul? 

Chr. You have seen a dead body. 

IxF. Often. 

Chr. If you applied fire to its hand or foot, would 
it suffer pain ? 

Inf. No. 



356 HELL. 

Chr. If you applied fire to the hand or foot of a 
living body, would it suffer pain ? 

Inf. Certainly. 

Chr. It is not the body then, quas% simply body, 
but life in the body which suffers. The greater the 
life or nervous power, the greater is the capability of 
suffering. ]^o life, no suffering or pain. 

Inf. That is clear. 

Chr. Is there such a thing as suffering distinct from 
bodily suffering? Is there such a thing as purely 
mental or spiritual suffering ? 

Inf. ITo doubt of it. 

Chr. When the body, therefore, suffers, it is life in 
the body which suffers. Distinct from the body this 
life, call it in man what you please, mind, spirit, 
soul, has a suffering of its own ; but, distinct from 
this life, the body itself has no capability of suffer- 
ing. I am speaking of man in his entirety. 

Inf. Proceed. 

Chr. Will you term this principle the soul ? 

Inf. The name matters little, so the thing be un- 
derstood between us. Term it the soul. 

Chr. The soul, then, is that life within us by 
which we — either through the body, or distinct from 
the body — are susceptible of suffering. 

Inf. But we are discussing the material suffering 
of fire as applicable to the soul in hell. You do not 
contend that, apart from the medium of the body, 
the soul can be susceptible of bodily or material 
pain? 

Chr. Certainly not. We have conceded the soul 
to have a suffering of its own, quite distinct from 



HELL. 357 

those communicated to it through material media. 
We have conceded, also, that separate from the soul 
in man these material media have no susceptibility 
of suffering in themselves. But I fully admit that 
material suffering, such as that felt from fire, can 
only be felt by the soul through material media, such 
as the body. 

Inf. Animals have life — are susceptible of suffer- 
ing — but that life is not a soul. 

Chr. Man is something more than an animal, and 
we are speaking of that principle within him by 
which he feels pain and delight as man, and not as 
an animal. Cattle have no principle within them 
susceptible of a thousand emotions of pain and pleas- 
ure of which the principle in man is susceptible. Is 
not that most evident ? What do mere animals know 
or feel, I do not say of any purely mental, spiritual, 
or moral emotion, but of any moral, spiritual, or 
intellectual sensation at all? The principle of sus- 
ceptibility to such things is not in them : in man it 
is. We agreed to call it, the soul. 

Inf. Well ! 

Chr. The question, then, stands thus. The body, 
without this soul, is not in man capable of pain. 
With this body it is capable of — ^first, material pain, 
such as mere animals suffer, such as the body in 
its animality suffers ; secondly, of immaterial pain, 
proper to itself, and altogether independent of ma- 
terial media. 

Inf. What follows ? 

Chr. It follows — first, that that which is cast into 
hell must, of necessity, be this life or soul itself of 



358 HELL, 

man, which alone imparts to the body the capacity 
of pain. For the body without this principle not 
possessing susceptibility, to cast it alone would be no 
more than the ancients did in consigning their dead 
friends to the funeral pyre. 

Inf. a very graceful mode of restoration to the 
four elements. 

Chr. If hell be the place of retributive suflfering 
for the wicked, that of the wicked which is cast in 
must be that life or soul by which also they were 
wicked. 

Inf. Proceed. 

Chr. Supposing the soul or life alone to be there 
condemned, you admit it would, under all contin- 
gencies and events, suffer the pain proper and pecu- 
liar to itself, be it in a material medium or not. 

Inf. If you carry hell no further than spiritual 
pain or remorse, I do not think I should dissent so 
much from the idea. 

Chr. I dare say not — but Christianity cannot ac- 
commodate itself to your ideas on the subject. It 
goes much further. We see, then, that a soul cannot 
only suffer pain, but that alone which does suffer 
human pain in the body or out of it, is the soul : 
without this life the body, in or out of hell, has no 
more sense of any kind of suffering than the stone 
in the road, or the iron in the furnace. Now, if the 
life itself be condemned to hell, it is, I conceive, a 
secondary consideration, whether its suffering there 
be only spiritual, or both spiritual and material; but 
you, I infer, do not think so ? 

Inf. Certainly not : I think just the contrary, and 



HELL. 359 

SO, I believe, do ninety-nine men out of a hundred. 
I think the material suffering the primary, the all- 
important question. 

Cim. Well, it may be so — I will raise no difference 
on that point. But will you give your reasons for 
such opinion? Why should the material suffering 
be the primary consideration ? 

Inf. Because, to speak frankly, I do not think men 
in general care a fraction for spiritual suffering or 
remorse compared to what they do for bodily pain. 
It stands to reason they should not. The more in- 
sensible any thing is, the less — as you state — is it 
susceptible of suffering. Now, the consciences of 
most people in the world are quite insensible to 
purely spiritual considerations, consequently quite 
insensible to any spiritual pain for the neglect or 
violation of them. 

Che. There is, I think, much truth in your state- 
ment ; but observe to what conclusion it forces you. 
If hell consisted of spiritual suffering alone, it would, 
by your reasoning, be no hell at all to the characters 
that have no conscience, the very characters for 
whom it is designed. The very fact of their having 
no conscience would cause it to be no hell of the 
soul, no place of spiritual remorse to them. 

Inf. Precisely. There can be no suffering of con- 
science to such as have petrified the conscience — no 
suffering of the soul to those in whom the soul has 
long been as dead and insensible as a cannon- 
ball. 

Chr. But it would, nevertheless, still remain a hell 
of the soul to all such as had not entirely, in this life, 



360 HELL ^MATERIAL. 

extinguished the sense of conscience, or the vitaUty — 
so to call it — of the soul. 

Inf. It would. 

Chk. In other words, the hell to which you do not 
except, a hell of spiritual but not material pain, would 
be none whatever to the very characters whom God 
and man alike arm themselves against and abhor; 
natures without pity, humanity, soul, or conscience. 
It would be hell only to such as still retained some 
sensibilities of their better being. Grant some con- 
science to remain in a man, that remnant becomes 
his hell : grant none whatever, that " none" becomes 
his total exemption from the possibility of all suffer- 
ing in hell. Such a hell is a premium, not a punish- 
ment, for utterly quenching conscience. For how 
can pain of conscience affect a Nero, a Borgia, in 
whom the thing itself has long ceased to exist ? We 
miglit, with as much sense, talk of a tiger feeling the 
hell of spiritual remorse for the infant he has de- 
Toured. 

Inf. I am, I fear, in a difficulty here. 

Chr. Is not this notion of a mere spiritual hell 
the reverse of what mankind have, in all ages in 
some form or other, held hell to be — a place of just 
punishment hereafter for those whom justice has 
failed to reach in this world ? Your theory, which 
is too the theory of a certain stamp of modern re- 
ligion wishing to be thought Christianity, proffers re- 
demption from suffering as a premium upon the 
worst and blackest degrees of villany and crime. 
Provided a man be only so deep a miscreant as to 
have cast away all sensibility to good, forthwith his 



HELL MATERIAL. 361 

very excess of depravity becomes his reward, his 
guarantee against pain. But let him retain some 
tenderness of conscience, some capability of penitence, 
contrition, sorrow, then in exact proportion to the 
amount of such tenderness you assign a spiritual hell 
and its pains to him. The ancients would hardly 
have selected their Minos from the ranks of Infidelity. 

EsTF. I had never reasoned the subject out to this 
extent. 

Che. Shall we admit, then, that a mere spiritual 
hell is none at all to the very characters whom — not 
to allude to the Scriptures — the universal judgment 
of mankind pronounces as only fit to be condemned 
to a separate world by themselves, to be, in fact, 
transported from the state in which, in defiance of all 
law and persuasion, they have become incurably 
vicious themselves, and nuclei of deadly infection to 
others ? Human governments, in dealing with such 
subjects, are compelled to adopt a course analogous 
to that which God has declared will be His course on 
the day of His judgment. Separation for years or 
for life in one case, for eternity in the other, is the 
principle of legislation. In both cases it is sepa- 
ration of two contrary classes of soul into contrary 
localities : here political, as well as before scientific 
analogy, is in accordance with Christianity, and con- 
demnatory of Infidelity. Human law finds it can 
deal with certain characters in no other way than 
the Divine has declared they will finally be dealt 
with by itself. 

Inf. But I can never persuade myself that hell is 
a place of bodily or material pain. 

16 



862 HELL MATERIAL. 

Chr. If it be not, there is not, on your supposition, 
any hell for such as are universally pronounced most 
deserving of it. Choose, then, between no hell at 
all, or a hell of material as well as spiritual pain ; for 
no hell at all is certainly less a premium on utter 
and irredeemable depravity than the one you suggest. 

Inf. No hell at all, then, certainly. I will not 
believe in an eternity of future bodily pain ; it is too 
frightful a conception to be for a moment entertained. 

Chr. Do you believe in pain now ? 

Inf. I must ; feeling is believing. 

Chr. Material j)ain exists here— in the next world 
why should it not also exist ? 

Inf. It may ; there is no proof that it does. 

Chr. There is no shadow of proof it does not : 
there is every reason to infer it will and must. Is 
there not such a thing as just punishment? 

Inf. It cannot be doubted. 

Chr. Our nature derives all its notions and feel- 
ings of justice from the Creator of that I^ature, from 
God. He must, therefore, be justice itself. If man 
be just, how much more God his maker? It must 
also be acknowledged, that in all ages scenes of the 
most revolting cruelty, extending from the throne to 
the cell of torture, have been perpetrated by classes 
of men — perpetrated often as the rule, not the excep- 
tion of government— sufficient to freeze the blood 
with horror. Now can you in your heart believe 
that the God who has implanted in us these feelings 
of indignation, — feelings so deep and vehement that 
they have, times innumerable, transported men into 
the commission against the agents of cruelty and 



HELL MATERIAL. 363 

oppression, of the very acts of cruelty and oppression 
they detest and condemn, — sees all the pain, injustice, 
and misery, inflicted by the brutal and depraved on 
the good, the weak, the unresisting, and yet really 
cares nothing about it ? Is it in harmony with, or in 
direct opposition to, right reason, that such monsters 
as those whom history consigns to the just execra- 
tion of mankind should be regarded and treated by 
God precisely in the same light as the innocent, un- 
offending victims of their vice, villany, and passions? 
Is it within the bounds of rational probability that 
God should view with equal indifference the men 
who devote their whole lives to truth and benefi- 
cence, and the men who systematically and deliber- 
ately inflict pain and degradation on all within their 
influence or power? Can it be that all the Herods 
on one side in the world, and all the Howards on the 
other, are considered as one character, to be dealt 
with by no distinction of condemnation or approba- 
tion, of penalty or reward, in the mind, the heart, 
the counsels of the Almighty ? If you believe this 
of any being, that being cannot be God ; nothing is 
clearer : for such a being would be devoid and des- 
titute of the first elements of rectitude. You may 
suppose the existence of such a being, but to propose 
him to us as identical with the Creator of the uni- 
verse and the author of conscience is an act of Infi- 
del delusion and insanity. God cannot be this ; term 
the being to whom you impute such a total absence 
of all discrimination between right and wrong any 
thing you please, he is as different from God as mid- 
night from midday, as powerlessness from omnip- 



364 HELL MATERIAL. 

otence, as guilt from goodness. God still remains, 
with God you still will have to deal. He that 
does separate forever between the righteous and the 
wicked is still to be encountered. Judge yourself 
herein. You do not shake hands with a convict ; 
you do not receive a burglar into your house ; you 
do not admit an immodest woman into the society of 
your wife and daughters ; if you do, your own heart 
rises in judgment against j^ou for making in your 
choice no difference between vice and virtue, be- 
tween the evil and the good. Will the God who 
created that heart, who is greater and truer than it, 
make no difference in His sphere, in His home, in 
His family, in heaven ! 

Inf. I find great difficulty in replying. The Be- 
ing that makes no distinction between good and evil 
men, good and evil actions, cannot be God. Any 
idea, therefore, of such a being has nothing to do 
with the true idea of God, which seems necessarily 
to involve and carry with it the definition of God as 
the very Being who has Himself originally made, and 
will Himself finally manifest the eternal distinction 
He has so made between good and evil. The execu- 
tion of this distinction, as proceeding from Himself, 
will he His judgments as contradistinguished from 
the judgments we now form as to who or what are 
good or wicked. Then, if God judges. He must 
condemn ; if He condemn. He must sentence ; that 
sentence must be a punishment : there can be no 
punishment, unless of pain, material or spiritual; 
certain characters have lost all capability of spiritual 
pain; material pain, therefore, alone remains; con- 



HELL MATERIAL. 365 

seqnently, as tliey must be separated totally in 
place as they already are in disposition from the 
opposite characters, the separate place of punishment 
— their hell — must be a place of material torment 
or pain. I must concede this, or affirm that the 
God who implanted the sense of justice, and of the 
distinction between right and wrong in my nature, 
has no such sense, or makes no such difference Him- 
self, which would be an inadmissible absurdity. 

Chr. You grant, then, that if God be just — and 
you say the idea of justice cannot be separated from 
that of God — there must exist for a certain class of 
souls a material hell. 

Inf. I am most loth to believe it, most reluctant 
to admit it. 

Chr. Reluctant to admit the practical justice of 
God ? Unless God be a mere sound, a name, and 
nothing else, such a hell for such souls must exist. 
Why, then, should you be more loth to believe in 
God's justice in act than in theory ? 

Inf. It is easily explained. Spiritual pain, by 
repetitions of the first act which caused it, ceases 
to be pain. I steal for the first time ; I am miser- 
able. I steal again ; I am less sensitive, therefore 
less miserable. A third time ; I am scarcely affected. 
A fourth time ; I am become indifferent to con- 
science. A fifth time ; it is clever. A sixth time ; 
I pride myself upon it. A seventh time ; I despise 
honesty, and match myself against the police. An 
eighth time ; I deprave others — perverting others 
constitutes my greatest, if not my sole pleasure. A 
ninth time ; I glory in the principle itself of lawless- 



366 HELL MATERU.L. 

ness and vice. A tenth time ; I am detected, tried, 
and hanged ; but as for spiritual pain, or any hell of 
conscience within me, I feel no more of that than 
the gallows on which I am suspended. ISTot so with 
material pain ; that may sometimes kill the body or 
wear the nerve out ; but it may also, as for example, 
in tic-douloureux, last as long as life itself, and each 
attack exceed the last in acuteness and severity. Spir- 
itual pain has thus that in its nature which soon causes 
it to cease to be a pain at all. I do not care, there- 
fore, for a merely spiritual hell, — I confess it : human 
nature does not care for it nor fear it : why ? It sees 
and feels by experience that it very soon ceases to 
be pain or hell at all. I^ero wept when he signed 
the first death-warrant submitted to hini : a few 
years after he gloated over daily massacres and Rome 
incendiarized. Compunction had ceased its action. 
But I do fear a material hell : so does every man. 
Men fear pain more than death ; they will do all 
things, try all remedies, to rid themselves of bodily 
pain and torture. [ISTow, if hell be material, and the 
life it affects eternal, that is a notion, I repeat, too 
harrowing to be entertained. 

Chr. More so, do you think, than the notion that 
God is a Being without any sense of love to the 
good, or of justice to the merciless, the depraved, 
and the impenitent? Which is the more terrible, 
that the universe should be without any other God 
than the fiction of a name, or that the men who are 
the cause of nine-tenths of the misery of mankind, — 
men without a grain of living soul or conscience in 
them towards God or man, — should be made amenable 



HELL PENAL, NOT PROBATIONARY. 367 

to eternal justice in the only way of which their na- 
tures are left susceptible — material pain ? 

Inf. Why not forgive ? 

Chr. God proffers unlimited forgiveness, but it 
must be accepted now ; it must be acted upon now ; 
it must be attended now with that effect which alone 
renders such forgiveness the initiatory step to salva- 
tion from such a hell, the change of such a nature 
from moral and spiritual death to moral and spiritual 
life. 

Inf. But why not forgive then ? 

Chr. Forgive a nature which would ever remain 
the same ? 

Inf. N^o ; renew it then as well as forgive. 

Chr. And for its renewal in faith and works roll 
back the times of God to this period of probation, in 
which the evil itself is the probation ; reverse the whole 
order and succession of the Divine counsels in heaven 
and earth ! It cannot be. God Himself can do no 
more than He has done to save the soul of man. He 
Himself can do no more than He has done in the 
sacrifice of His Son; if that be rejected by man, 
eternity itself presents no further, no other, no sec- 
ond Sacrifice for Sin, or Saviour from hell. 

Inf. If I believed a material hell as inevitably 
consequent on impenitent sin, or on the rejection of 
Christ as the Saviour-God, I would never sin, I would 
become a Christian, l^o man really and unfeign- 
edly believing it, would ever by vice or indifference 
incur the risk of so awful a penalty. The fact that 
men do sin, do abandon themselves to secular fears 
and indulgences of every description, proves of itself 



368 HELL PENAL, NOT PROBATIONAEY 



that they do not believe in such a future material 
place of pain as hell. If they did, they would not 
for a single day continue to lead the lives they do ; 
that is as clear as that a man, however thirsty he 
might be, would never touch the cup, however tempt- 
ing and sparkling it might appear, of which he knew 
the contents to be the beverage of poison and death. 
Chk. Yery true ; and it is this very Infidelity, 
this want of faith in the expressed revelations and 
forewarnings of God, that makes men wicked, keeps 
them wicked, obdures them in their wickedness. 
They do not believe that God will judge the wicked ; 
they do not believe in such a state of pain and sepa- 
ration for the wicked as hell ; otherwise, as you 
state, they would no more do evil than a thirsty 
man would drink off an assured and immedicable 
poison. It is Unbelief that thus murders the souls of 
men, and perpetuates moral disorder in individuals, 
families, and nations. The Scriptures are, therefore, 
by your own confession, right in stating the exist- 
ence of Faith in the Word of God, in a future judg- 
ment, heaven, and hell, to be that indispensable re- 
quisite which preserves the soul from vice, defilement, 
and shame, and establishes it in righteousness, devo- 
tion, and purity. Your Infidelity, on the contrary, 
by utterly ignoring and refusing to believe in the 
practical justice of the Almighty, positively encour- 
ages and infiames men to the perpetration of every 
crime, and the indulgence of every ruinous passion. 
It destroys the vitality of the soul, and the sensibility 
of the conscience; it rends up that most just, truth- 
ful, and salutary fear of a holy and sin-remembering 



THE FEAR OF GOD WHAT IS IT? 369 

God, with which all human laws are superfluous, 
without which they are useless to deter man from 
the commission of turpitude, crime, and impiety. 

Inf. But surely this fear of hell would never of 
itself render a man a good, lovely, or noble char- 
acter ? 

Chr. Who affirms it would ? or who affirms that, 
where it does exist, it ever exists " by itself?" It is 
not the end, it is the beginning of the soul's wisdom ; 
for who does not know that he who believes in a hell 
for the cruel, the pitiless, the exacting, the oppres- 
sive, the insensible, will fear to be cruel, pitiless, 
exacting, oppressive, insensible ? 

Inf. And you advocate " fear" as a sound princi- 
ple of appeal and penalty ? 

Chr. In its true sense there is none sounder, none 
more deeply implanted in man's nature, none produc- 
tive of more certain results. False fears there are m- 
numerable, as of every true sensation there are innu- 
merable counterfeits ; the world is a mass of false and 
contemptible fears of things that ought to be spurned, 
not feared, but "the fear of God" is as genuine, 
pure, and holy a part of man's right nature as hope, 
or faith, or love. He is the only legitimate object of 
the soul's fear ; nothing is there more truly natural 
or more elevatino; than the fear of God. Somethins: 
of it remains in the worst of men ; how few, how 
very few, die that do not breathe a prayer to be at 
peace at least with God ! You must yourself feel, 
that to confront God face to face in judgment is 
a very different thing, indeed, from arguing against 
Christianity, its piiesthood, and its Scripture ; for a 

16* 



370 THE FEAR OF GOD WHAT IS IT? 

mail to be about to prove in his own person, and at 
the cost of his own soul, whether there is a holy God 
and an Eternal Judgment, is a far different thing 
than to propose this and that imaginary objection to 
religion and its ways. Supposing these even to carry 
certain weight in theory, what becomes of them in 
the light of the great fact of his own impending 
judgment? God Himself, — a holy God, — is to be 
met; before Him the man by himself and upon 
himself stands to receive judgment. And no wise 
man will ever cast away the " fear" of that judgment 
in himself, or seek to weaken it in othei's. 

Inf. But the fear of hell is not the fear of God. 

Chr. It is part of it — a very essential part ; for it 
is the fear of the power and just judgment of God in 
the punishment of sin. 

Inf. But this " fear" has led at times to the most 
frightful and destructive superstitions. 

Chr. The Christian fear of God has not only not 
led to a single superstition, but it expels from the 
soul every false, every servile, every superstitious 
terror whatever. But I go much further than this : 
the fear of God it is which in all ages, even though 
under superstitious forms, has made the moral and 
therefore also the physical strength of nations. The 
people who have faith in this one great truth of the 
future justice of God will always prove themselves of 
higher caste, character, and power, than the people 
who, possessing all the advantages of wealth, posi- 
tion, civilization, have fallen from faith in that truth. 
The soul of the people is in this last case a lie 
towards God, and tliey are sure to decay and perish 



THE FKAR OF GOD WHAT IS IT? 371 

from the effects of the lie, from the corruption of 
their own soul. All history teaches us this lesson, 
that the substances of many of the great truths of 
Christianity have been embodied in the religions 
of many nations before Christ put His seal upon 
them as of Divine origin and sanction. The forms 
in which the substances were taught and accepted 
were often superstitious, but the substance under 
those forms was and remained true and Divine. In 
Rome, for instance, as long as the nation preserved 
their faith in the substantial truth of a Divine sepa- 
ration between the righteous and the wicked in a 
future world, under the superstitious forms of Elysium 
and Tartarus, the mischief of the superstition of the 
form was nothing in the balance against the good 
effect of the genuine faith in the substantial truths 
themselves. " Such superstitions," argued a certain 
class of infidels in the forms and substances alike, 
"are very well for the people;" but gradually the 
Infidelity extended to the people : no distinction 
was drawn between the variety of the form and the 
verity of the substance ; both were equally ridiculed 
and disbelieved. The result was, that the Roman 
people, from being the highest-principled race in the 
world, became a populace without piety, without 
patriotism, without worth, without morals, fit only 
to be ruled by the iron despotism their own vices 
challenged and established. Polybius, the Greek 
historian, emphatically remarks, that as long as the 
Romans retained their superstitions, no nation rival- 
led them in private honor and public probity ; every 
ofiicer of the State mio:ht have been intrusted with 



372 THE FEAR OF GOD THE ROOT OF CONSCIENCE. 

untold treasures ; and he affirms this character for 
integrity to have been the real source of both their 
home strength and foreign influence. With the ex- 
tinction of the Old Faith perished also the moral 
worth of Rome and all the confidence of foreign 
nations in the personal or national integrity of the 
Roman. With this view I fully concur. The phi- 
losophers or sciolists who spoke contemptuously of 
these superstitions, as if they were nothing but pure 
illusions, were themselves the representatives of the 
grossest and most dangerous ignorance, — the igno- 
rance that neither saw, knew, nor appreciated the 
eternal and vital truths impressed by such forms on 
the hearts and souls of the people. They were them- 
selves more shamefully shallow in error and wider 
from the truth than the simplest-minded Samnite 
farmer on the Apennine Hills. When both the good 
and the bad, the false and the true of the ancient 
religion had melted down into a Stygian Lake of 
black and stagnant Infidelity, Christianity cast the 
first rays of a new morning through the hideous 
mists of this foul and false philosophy. Men hailed 
and accepted it, because it was both salvation for 
society in this world and for the individual soul in 
the next. It restored the j ust fear of God, the true 
faith in the eternal distinction between vice and 
virtue and their future finalities. 

Inf. It is very probable that such a conviction, 
being once made part of a man's nature, will pre- 
serve him from lawlessness and crime. 

Chr. By removing it, what have you in the man 



THE FEAR OF GOD THE ROOT OF CONSCIENCE. 373 

himself to fall back upon ? In dealing with the soul 
and its impulses, have external physical preventatives 
and barriers been ever successful ? Is the thief made 
less a thief by loading him with irons ? the murderer 
less a murderer by chaining him to the galleys ? the 
shameless woman less shameless by the bars and 
bolts of Oriental im^murement ? Having no principle 
of true fear towards God to appeal to within the 
man's soul, you are compelled for very safety's sake 
to have recourse to the police, the prison, and the 
scaffold. 

Inf. You are •certainly right, here ; we must have 
police, prisons, and scaffolds ; certain characters 
could never be managed without them. 

Chk. They are absolutely necessary for the irre- 
claimably, the incorrigibly criminal ; but are they 
effective of that moral life and conduct which the 
internal principle of faith and fear towards God pro- 
duces, independent of all external appliances, in 
every individual in whom it operates ? Are they not 
to the wicked now precisely what hell w^ill be to 
them hereafter — penal, not purgatorial nor preven- 
tive? For a preventive you must look to a rectify- 
ing of the conscience itself in man ; if yoa expect 
the police to do the work of the conscience, experi- 
ence declares the more they are called upon the less 
effect do they produce ; a certain proof that we are 
attempting to make them do a work which some- 
thing else ought to do. A tenant of yours sows 
henbane in one of his best fields. He complains in 
autumn that it costs him a ruinous expenditure of 



374 INFIDELITY ^ITS POYP^RTY. 

money to employ people to weed the field clean 
of henbane, and collect it into poisonous heaps to 
be destroyed ; — what would you say to him? 

Inf. Why did he sow henbane seed ? 

Chr. The henbane is Infidelity ; the field is Eng- 
land ; the farmer is the nation ; the spring is youth ; 
the autumn is manhood ; the weeders are the police ; 
the poisonous heaps are the prisons and the gallows ; 
or rather so it would be if the principles of these 
infidel works were to be disseminated and drilled 
into the families and schools of England. In a few 
years she would perish in her own home by mortal 
infection and disease from the plants of her own 
sowing, growth, and gathering. Thus, whether you 
reason from the nature of spiritual or bodily pain, 
from the distinction between the probationary and 
penal states, or from the general laws of analogy, 
you find it not in your powder to deny the existence 
of a material hell. Start and instil doubts upon it in 
men's minds; you cannot solve those doubts, you 
cannot render them certainties, still less can you 
liberate a single soul from hell, should it really exist 
as the future penal state of all that is odious and 
detestable in mankind. On such a subject, to be free 
from fear, a man must be incontestably certain as to 
the nonentity of such a place ; you do not pretend to 
give him this certainty; you suggest doubts only; yet 
by condemning his Faith, you cause him to lead such a 
life as, without any doubts at all, will, if it be a reali- 
ty, end in it and the sentence of condemnation which 
precedes it. Yet you express surprise that mankind 
will have nothing to do w4th " the intellect" of such 



INFIDELITY PRACTICALLY TESTED. 375 

Infidelity as this — an Infidelity that has no guaranty 
to ofler them for the truth of any one of its asser- 
tions, or the security of any one of its positions. To 
even the most unscrupulous character Infidelity must 
thus appear a most hazardous investment against 
time and eternity. On the other hand, what does it 
propose to the pure, the good, the compassionate, 
the kind-hearted, the generous, the truthful, the suf- 
ferej' for the relief and happiness of others, the mar- 
tyr for righteousness, principle, and truth ? Where 
is its heaven, its immortality, its consummation of 
all things in the sinless kingdom and blissful vision 
of the unveiled Almighty ? What single inducement 
does it hold out to eschew evil and ensue good ? 

Inf. Inducement! Do j^ou then, after all, reduce 
Christianity to considerations of selfishness ? 

Chr. If by selfishness you mean intense devotion 
to one's individual interests, without reference to the 
feelings and happiness of others, it is unnecessary to 
say a word in defence of Christianity against so 
groundless an imputation. Its most malignant ene- 
mies admit it to be a religion, the first sacrifice on 
whose altars must be that of " self." If, on the con- 
trary, you contend that Christianity infers consid- 
eration for our own interests, as defined and designed 
for us by the wisdom and goodness of our Maker, 
you are, in my opinion, right — it is " selfish," in the 
sense that faith in its revelations and obedience to 
its precepts are so thoroughly our interest, that they 
will exalt our " very selves, body and soul," to the 
highest acme of gloriousness and joy which created 
existence can attain. " Selfishness," in its ordinary 



376 INFIDELITY PRACTICALLY TESTED. 

acceptation, signifies the pursuing our own interest 
according to our unenlightened and ignorant idea of 
it. Christianity implies the pursuing such according 
to the wisdom of God, and not our own. Selfishness 
sacrifices others to itself ; Christianity, itself to others. 
The selfish man follows an interest destructive of all 
but his own pride, comfort, or importance ; the Chris- 
tian an interest conducive to, and conservative of, the 
welfare of each and all as well as himself. 

Inf. Nevertheless it is " selfishness,'' though in its 
noblest form. 

Chr. Tou mean, I presume, that Christianity, 
which eradicates selfishness in every low form from 
the human heart, yet so terminates as eventually to 
realize for the believer the objects which the noblest 
form of selfishness — the sublimest ambition, for in- 
stance — proposes to its devotee ? Granted ; but to 
apply to it such a term as " selfishness," because it 
efi'ects for every man, in God's way, all and infinitely 
more than selfishness effects for itself only in man's 
way, is, I think, a perversion of language. If a pa- 
rent propose to each of his children such a line of 
conduct as will insure the individual and collective 
happiness of all, can you term those children '' self- 
ish," because they adopt and persevere in that line ? 
He, rather, would be the selfish character who, aban- 
d 3ning it, and with it the interest of the family in com- 
mon, sought out ways to aggrandize himself at the cost 
of the disunion and misery of his brothers and sisters. 
The former case is that of Christianity, which is no 
less the interest of all society than of each individual 
— the latter is that of the man who acknowledges 



FAITH AND LOVE. 3Y7 

no obligation, in his own person, to observe the moral 
and spiritual duties God has prescribed, without ex- 
ception, to the whole family of man on earth. 

Inf. But it requires more faith than I can com- 
mand to believe, among other things, that the 
blessed results which it promises goodness and vir- 
tue, will any more issue from it, than the penal re- 
sults which it suspends above the heads of the crim- 
inal and impenitent. It may be true that a certain 
soul-repose is now gained by the Christian — but it 
appears quite a delusive hope to imagine that heaven, 
immortality, sinlessness, everlasting youth and joy 
can be his indefeasible inheritance hereafter. 

Chr. That would, I apprehend, resolve itself into 
the question whether they are really promised him 
by the Almighty or not. If they are, there is no 
Infidel who would not admit the promise of God to 
be tantamount to certainty. 

Inf. But the faith required to believe that such 
will be the fact is very great. 

Chr. Believing that God has already given His 
Son to be crucified for the redemption of the soul, I 
consider heaven and its accompaniments not to be 
distinct and after-gifts, but part and elements of that 
gift itself. I regard the gift of heaven and immor- 
tality as bearing no more comparison in the sight of 
the Almighty to the gift of His own son, than, in 
the sight of Abraham, did the wood of the altar to 
the life of Isaac. However glorious that inherit- 
ance of the saints may be, it is not to be named as 
a proof of God's love to us with the giving of His 
Son to the humiliation and death of the Cross. 



378 FAITH AND LOVE. 

Were I, indeed, a Sociniaii — did I not believe Jesus 
Christ to be the eternal Son of God, the very mag- 
nitude and excess of the future reward, having no 
antecedent of equal greatness of love towards us in 
God's past dealings with our souls, might suggest 
feelings of incredulity in the verity of the promise. 
But now that the Almighty Father, who has given 
His Son, should in Him give ns heaven also, appears 
to me to be a very small thing indeed to raise any dif- 
ficulty of faith upon. In addition to this, the same 
amount of faith which was exacted of earlier believ- 
ers has ceased to be exacted from me : it has become 
knowledge. I see so many of the august promises 
of old to the Church now substantiated, that faith in 
the accomplishment of the remainder scarcely tries 
my soul at all. Had I been one of the Twelve, I 
should, perhaps, have been staggered at the promise 
which affirmed that the Church of the Twelve should 
become the Church of all nations, I witness it so far 
fulfilled, that what remains of it to be realized I con- 
sider in the light of an absolute certainty. Had I 
travelled with them, and observed the debased moral 
feeling of all the nations whom they were commanded 
to teach and baptize, I might, perhaps, have despaired 
of the promise that in Christianity God would " pour 
forth of His Spirit on all fiesh." In^ow that I see 
whole nations, once as sanguinary and savage as the 
brutes of the forest, reclaimed, humanized, and re- 
fined by the instruction of the Gospel and the Grace 
of the Holy Spirit, the demand that I should believe 
India, China, Africa will be no exceptions to the 
universality of this Divine influence, constitutes no 



FAITH AND LOYE. 379 

great exaction on my faith and reason. The faith of 
those men of old who, against all that their own eyes 
presented to them, doubted not that whatever God 
promised He would surely bring to pass, was more 
deeply drawm upon than mine, before w^hose senses 
these past promises stand forth as present incon- 
testable facts of the social and spiritual state of the 
world. It is in my power, living in the nineteenth 
century, to sweep my arm around the whole horizon 
of the globe, and exclaim, with reference to the truth 
of the promises hereafter to be realized, '' Behold ! 
the past and the present are the evidence and the 
pledges of the future. He that, according to His 
Word, hath so far wrought, will, according to the 
same "Word, finish his work of salvation on earth and 
in heaven." Thus, as generation on generation pro- 
ceed, they will find less exacted of God from their 
faith, more from their love, until faith itself shall 
have ceased and been lost in witnessing the verifica- 
tion of the last of the promises of God ; until hope 
dissolve in fruition, and of all the graces now required 
of us. Divine charity alone will be the one which 
Heaven itself shall cause to never fail. The Great 
Day of God, as it will terminate the existence of hope 
and faith, so will it commence that state of pure, un- 
alloyed, and holy love, w^hich alone is the real king- 
dom of Christ. The nearer we approach that mani- 
festation of what Christianity really is — for now it is 
man's Christianity, as it were, not Christ's, which we 
witness ; its struggles in flesh, not its triumphs in God 
and the good — the more, one after another, by this 
very fulfilment, the unfulfilled promises of God w^ill 



380 THE christian's faith 

decrease in number ; the less and less call shall we 
have on our faith, the more will God look to us to 
increase and sanctify ourselves in that grace of char- 
ity, which, gradually absorbing all other duties into 
itself, as God draws all the souls it animates nearer 
to Himself, will as the alone image of God survive 
with God Himself, the end of all means, and comple- 
tion of all virtues. To him, therefore, who duly 
considers how mightily and effectually the power of 
God has in all cases hitherto realized His word, 
His future promises of heaven and immortality pre- 
sent no difficulty of faith. I will tell you who, to 
my mind, requires far greater faith than the Christian 
does. 

Inf. Who? 

Chr. The unchristian, worldly Infidel. The Chris- 
tian believes in the certainty of the future happiness 
promised him by the Almighty. No experience 
gainsays this belief — the rest and ease of soul pro- 
duced by it attests its truth : all analogy, and the 
fulfilment of many as wonderful, and at the time as 
incredible promises, so far confirm it as to give it in 
some respects the character of perfect knowledge. 
He has reason, therefore, of the most solid descrip- 
tion for such faith, and for the course of life which 
proceeds upon it. But will you inform me of the 
nature and vastness of the faith which is exercised 
by the man that, after the experience of so many 
thousand years to the contrary, still believes and 
acts on the belief that the happiness of the soul is 
to be found in something apart from God ? Every 
age has tried the experiment : every age pronounced 



THE infidel's FAITH. 381 

and held it up to warning, as a desperate failure. 
He has only to examine his own circle to be con- 
vinced that, unless a man possesses something under 
him more stable than himself or any temporal source 
of power, it is not in the nature of things that he 
can be happy or at rest in soul. Nevertheless, so 
unbounded is such a one's faith in his own conceit, 
in the capability of fortune to bestow all that his 
heart desires, that he ventures health, conscience, 
life itself, on the pursuit. I affirm this to be a wilder 
and more insane faith than any you can impute to 
the most illiterate fanatic in Christianity ; for it is 
in defiance of all past and present experience, of all 
the deductions of common-sense, of all the avowals 
and declarations of the wisest and most practical 
men, and — if God ever spoke to man — against the 
explicit word and admonition of his Creator. The 
faith of the Christian in God's promises is, to my 
mind, wisdom, reason, experience, sense, love, nobil- 
ity, compared to what this worldling promises him- 
self on the principle of Infidelity in God. This man 
succeeds in his pursuit : nothing is more common 
than for God to give a man his heart's desire, not to 
withhold from him the legitimate material result of 
his toil and energies : if he seeks riches, to let him 
gain them ; if station, to master it ; if pleasure, to 
command it. But then, the misery of the success ! 
the deception to his soul which his whole life is now 
detected to have been! the black vacuum which 
makes the fretful, dissatisfied, morose old man 
even more wretched over his success, than have 
previously all the preyings of mind and trepidations 



382 THE christian's faith 

(>r alarm by which he has ceaselessly been tormented 
during the fifty years of its weary chase ! From the 
vulgar mania of this man's credulity my reason and 
my soul alike recoil. Christianity appears to me to 
speak with the voice of pure reason, as well as with 
the witnessing of the issues of all such pursuits as 
these, when it would persuade us to lay the founda- 
tion of all our actions in God and His truthfulness. 
Infidelity jars upon every nerve of sense within me 
when it advises — " Have faith in every thing but 
God ; believe in any thing but the Word of God ; 
believe that money, advancement, opinion, worldly 
success can make you happy ; but do not believe that 
heaven and its success, the advancement of your 
best self, the soul, the fruition of its better joys, the 
praise of God and angels can possess that power." 
Infidelity here exhausts and bankrupts the patience 
of reason. I desire to know if faith in any power 
created of God — mind, man, myself, means — be rea- 
sonable, is not faith in God Himself more reason- 
able ? If I transfer to any of them the faith which 
nothing but Omnipotence can verify, I have surely so 
far lost the correct sense of things, and the guidance 
of right reason. Let a man so far prize fortune as it 
really conduces to his independence of mind, his 
health, his comforts, his j ust position, his freedom from 
the trammels of servility, or excessive and wasting la- 
bor. Is there any necessity to carry this appreciation 
into idolatry ? Are there not countless instances daily 
recurring, in which the incapacity of fortune to touch 
the soul are as evident to the child as to the philoso- 
pher ? There are necessities in the soul of Croesus 



THE infidel's FAITH. 383 

the wealth and bullion of Croesus cannot supply. 
And if the soul be hollow, the whole man above the 
animal still remains a want, a pauperism, and a 
craving. The higher we ascend in the scale of crea- 
tion, the weaker become in us those feelings and 
propensities that receive gratification from the pleas- 
ures procurable by mere riches. Of all the joys 
in heaven, not one is attainable by the possession of 
wealth : of all the true, hearty, genuine joys on earth, 
how few are there that mere money can originate 
or command — how many are there which it posi- 
tively vitiates and destroys ! In the costly board, 
the massive plate, the Sybaritic viands, the correct 
establishment, the imposing ostentation and display 
of rank, we see the extent of what opulence can 
effect for corporeal and social gratification. He that 
has not all this, believes that if he had he would be 
happy. Are they that have it, indebted to it for 
happiness? If it be hereditary, if it be what they 
are accustomed to from their infancy, they are as 
profoundly indifferent to it as the farmer is to his 
j)arlor, or the laborer to his kitchen. They are 
panting for something else. Opulence and its advan- 
tages, great and envied as they may be, fail to con- 
tent " the spirit that is in man :" it would be as 
much to the purpose to expect it to be satisfied with 
carrion as with gold. Now does Infidelity deem 
it "intellect" to tell us that this interior spiritual 
world does not exist, or that, if it does, there are 
no objects designed to be its respondents? With 
more reason might it aver that God having created 
in me an eye, He has created nothing to be seen; 



381 THE christian's faith — 

an ear, yet nothing to be heard; hands, yet nothing 
to be felt ; a mind, yet nothing to be learnt ; than 
that He has created an immortal soul, yet nothing 
to answer and satisfy the immortal needs and action 
of that soul. 

Inf. This illustration you derive from the analogy 
of Nature, or perhaps the economy of supply and 
demand in commerce. 

Che. It may exist there, but I derive it from 
another source — from the Great Teacher of the 
Soul. " Who is there among you that, if his child 
ask him for bread, he will give him a stone ; or if he 
ask a fish, will he give him a scorpion ? " The soul 
does ask God its Father for the bread of the soul — 
for that which will sustain and satisfy, not that 
which, like the scorpion, will sting, inflame, exas- 
perate, and poison, with the torture of a hellish thirst, 
its immortal longings. God gives his child, the soul, 
that which it does in all its inexpressible aspirations 
and emotions pray Him to give : He gives it Christ 
and heaven. But what has Infidelity to profi'er it — 
be it the soul of a heathen or Christian — when it 
thus, after the first libation, spurns the contentments 
of the sensual life, and cries to its Creator for pleas- 
ures of like nature with itself — spiritual, eternal, 
incorruptible ? 

Inf. ITothing. How, not admitting such immor- 
tality, could it have ? It would be a contradiction. 

Chr. As it is, it is a flagrant contradiction. In 
this present existence we have these yearniugs and 
passions of the soul in full activity : we request from 
Infidelity an explanation of them. The meanest 



THE USTFIDEl's FAITH. 385 

creature in whom God has implanted an appetite, 
finds wherewith to meet and satisfy it : in Scriptural 
language, " God feeds the very sparrows :" it is that 
satisfaction which constitutes such happiness as theirs 
is : but, say you, for the Soul, the dove of eternity, there 
is no food prepared of God to meet those appetites 
which will not and cannot feed on the carnal, the mun- 
dane, the sensual. Eight reason, I submit, must reject 
the supposition that God should so provide for the 
necessities of the fowl of the air and the worm of the 
earth, yet leave wholly uncared for the necessities of 
the noblest part in His noblest work. That the soul is 
not content with what contents the body, is a matter 
of universal experience and confession : we do not learn 
that from Christianity ; but we do learn from Chris- 
tianity that God has made special provision, and what 
that provision is, for its special and paramount needs 
both in time and eternity. What a singular grievance, 
in truth, his own soul must often be to an Infidel ! 
What a cause of the most perplexing contradictions 
between himself and his creed ! What a protest in 
every form of tacit rebellion and passive resistance 
against being subordinated to its own subjects and 
implements — the perishing organs of the body and 
their more perishing pleasures ! What irrepressible 
abhorrences of the swine-husks the Infidel intellect 
presents to it for food! What strugglings to be 
liberated from its foul companions, and to return, 
though naked and in tears, to its own home — " Let 
me arise hence, and go to my Father !" 

Inf. Granting that there is a proper fruition pre- 
pared for the soul, a point yet remains to be cleared 

17 



386 WHAT IS IT THAT 

up to my apprehension. How is it that any man who 
has not utterly extirpated every slightest penchant 
for every slightest sin, can be an inheritor of that 
kingdom of pnre and perfect righteousness ? ISTow 
no man dies without some tiiict of sin. If all tinct 
of sin be not purged away in this life, you Prot- 
estants hold it cannot be forgiven in the life to 
come. 

Chr. I am no further Protestant than the Church 
of England is : I can only answer you, therefore, as 
an Anglo-Catholic : other Protestants can answer for 
themselves. 

Inf. Does not the Anglo-Catholic Church hold the 
view I have stated ? 

Chr. I am not aware it does to the extent you 
assume. There is a certain sin, saith our Lord, which 
shall not be forgiven, either in this world, nor in the 
world to come — implying that certain sins are for- 
given in the world to come — such may be those of 
which good Christians, suddenly cut off, may not 
have had time to bethink themselves, to confess to 
Godj and to implore remission for. We may believe 
this, yet consistently repudiate purgatory, or the 
notion that such purification can only take place 
through the agency of penal fire. 

Inf. Nevertheless, whatever tinct of sin or immo- 
rality remains unforgiven on earth must be cleansed 
before such a man inherits the Kingdom — if not here, 
then by an act of Christ in the next world. 

Chr. Yes. 

Inf. If this solution protects you in one quar- 
ter, it exposes you to greater peril from another. 



EXCLUDES FROM HEAVEN? 387 

How is it that sin does not forever exclude from 
Heaven ? 

Chr. It does. 

Inf. Forever? 

Chr. Forever. 

Inf. Surely not. No soul is there of the race of 
Adam in heaven which was not once sullied with 
sin: many, like David, deeply sullied. Yet they 
are in heaven. Sin, therefore, does not forever ex- 
clude from heaven. 

Chr. Is the stain of sin on them now ? 

Inf. No. 

Chr. If such stain were on them could they be in 
heaven ? 

Inf. I conclude not — that is, according to your 
faith, which declares that nothing but the perfectly 
pure and holy can exist in heaven. 

Chr. And such are they. The blood of Christ has 
not only obliterated the stain, but destroyed in them 
the existence of the thing which imparted the stain. 
Except for this blood, sin, both in its stain and power 
' — and of that powder expulsion from heaven is part — 
would have remained in them. Regarded by itself 
sin does forever exclude from heaven. But where 
Christ is, sin ceases to €xist. David, and every saint 
in Rest were once sinners, therefore in themselves 
forever excluded. Now they are so washed in the 
laver of a new birth and creation in Christ, that sin 
has ceased to either attach or inhere into their soul. 
For the same reason no soul of man, which is not 
thus waslied and cleansed in the blood of Christ, can 
enter heaven: sin remains in it, and that will, of 



388 WHAT IS IT THAT 

itself, forever exclude it, without the necessity of 
any further act of judgment on God's part — or, as 
St. John expresses it, ''He that receives not Christ, 
is condemned already." 

Inf. I so expected — and thus come to my con- 
cluding objection to your religion, which is, that 
your faith, by making heaven dependent wholly on 
Jesus Christ, and not on morality, undermines the 
value and obligations of morality. 

Chr. The answer to such a speculative objection 
as this, must be made by matters of fact. Does 
Christianity moralize or demoralize men — individu- 
ally and socially — does it demoralize England? Is 
the immorality in any country attributable to the 
precepts and faith of Jesus Christ ? 

Inf. I cannot be so hardy as to answer in the 
affirmative. But it is for this reason the more ex- 
traordinary that it does not make heaven the recom- 
pense of the morality it forms in men, instead of 
being a gift of mercy from God in Christ His Son. 
How do you explain such an anomaly ? 

Chr. Is it an anomaly ? 

Inf. Surely. Christianity builds up a moral sys- 
tem in man for the kingdom of heaven — ^yet it as- 
serts this morality constitutes not the remotest claim 
to this kingdom, which is solely a gift and not a wage 
from God. Would it not much more strengthen and 
exalt morality, to make heaven its wages, and not — 
irrespectively at times of all morality, such as in 
the instance of the Robber on the cross — a grace in 
Christ? 

Chr. You deem it more reasonable that heaven 



EXCLUDES FROM HEAVEN? 389 

should be a premium awarded by the Almighty to a 
moral life on earth, than part only of God's gift to 
us, in Christ, His Son ? 

Inf. Yes. 

Che. By a moral life you mean the observance of 
the moral law — much what Scripture means by keep- 
ing the whole law of God ! 

Inf. Exactly. 

Chk. Nothing then prevents you from challenging 
heaven in your own right as a perfect moral char- 
acter. 

Inf. Yes, Christianity prevents. 

Chr. You greatly err. So far from preventing 
you, it declares that if you can truly challenge 
heaven on the ground of moral rectitude, you will, 
according to the infallible promise of God, receive 
it as your own right. He that doeth, shall live. 
" What shall I do to inherit eternal life ? Keep the 
commandments." That, the original promise, does 
and will forever hold good to every soul of man. 
Every soul which has kept the Law of God may 
claim the promise of heaven from God by the title 
of its own individual obedience. If you have kept 
it, well and good : 3* ou will as surely receive heaven 
in your own right, according to God's promise, as the 
Christian will in Christ's right, according to God's 
promise. The question here again resolves into a 
matter of fact. Have you kept the whole law or not? 

Inf. The whole law who could keep ? 

Chr. Infraction of the law in one point is an in- 
fraction of the whole as law. A murderer may keep 
the law of England in all points but that which pro- 



390 CHRISTIANITY AND MORALITY. 

hibits murder : infringing it in that one point, he 
incurs the full penalty of the law in its integrity as 
a law-breaker. Similarly the observation of nine 
commandments extends no immunity to the violation 
of the tenth : he that is guilty of one incurs the guilt 
attached to the failure of legal obedience. Whether 
you or any other individual are thus guilty or not, is, 
I repeat, a question of evidence and facts. Chris- 
tianity first declares that if your legal obedience is 
inviolate, heaven is yours in your own right. If it 
has been violated, then, on your own grounds, any 
claim you may have of your own to heaven is for- 
feited ; you are disenfranchised and disinherited of 
all right or title to heaven. Is not that clear? 

Inf. Certainly: if I desert service, or as it were 
abandon my work, the engagement is on my part 
violated, the stipulations annulled, and the wages 
forfeited. 

Chr. Secondly, it affirms that by reason of a cer- 
tain flaw in your nature, occasioned by the very act 
of desertion, it is impossible you can now, however 
sincerely or assiduously you exert yourself, fulfil the 
original compact of that obedience through the love 
due from the soul to its Creator. However far your 
obedience may extend, the obedience itself is radically 
defective by the absence from it as its right root and 
cause of this spiritual love to God. The rich young 
man instanced in the Gospel illustrates my meaning. 
" What shall I do to inherit eternal life ?" " Keep the 
commandments." "All have I kept from my youth 
upward." ''One thing thou lackest, follow me." ISTo 
— he would not; the soul-love to God, to Christ as 



CHRISTIANITY AND MORALITY. 391 

our God, and tlie following Him from that sonl-love 
alone, was that lacking in him and in us, which 
vitiates even whatever obedience we do by nature 
attain to. But so far from Christianity preventing 
you from any attempt at this perfect obedience, it 
implores you to try it. " Be perfect as your Father 
in heaven." Knowing full w^ell that the more un- 
feignedly you do try, the more heartfelt will be your 
confession that you cannot, by your own power, act 
up to even the requisitions of your own conscience, 
much less of the holy law of God. If heaven is to 
be yours, it must be by some other title than such as 
is grounded on your moral merit, or legal obedience. 
Is there any Priestcraft in such plain dealing as this ? 
K you have kept the law, you are secure of heaven in 
your own right ; for the promise of God has gone 
forth upon such obedience to Adam, to you, to every 
soul of the race of Probation. If you have never 
fallen from God's law, you have no need of a Saviour. 
Christianity is not commissioned, nor did Christ 
come to such, for so He expressly states. " I am not 
come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance : 
I am not sent except to the lost." " Christ came 
into the world to save sinners." This is one of the 
fundamental principles of the Gospel, and pervades 
its whole delivery to man. 

Inf. Yery true ; but this very Gospel, in laying 
down such a principle, terrifies, instead of, as it might 
be imagined, soothing me. 

Chr. How? 

Int. It compels an appeal to my own conscience ; 
it holds up before that conscience the mirror of the 



392 CHBISTIAiq^ITY AND MORALITY. 

Gospel-law of God ; it drags me to its bar ; it con- 
trasts my obedience with its requisitions ; it will not 
permit me to compare myself, my actions, my life, 
with any other code, or to judge by any other stand- 
ard than that of God. 

Che. But what in all this should terrify or alarm 
you, if, as you say, your conscience is clear ? 

'' Hie murus aheneus esto, 
Nil conscire sibi, nulla pallescere culpa." 

It is the very process which a conscience clear of all 
self-accusations would court and challenge, the very 
process it must go through at the bar of heaven, if 
not on earth, before it can establish the validity of 
its claim to heaven. If you need no Saviour, what 
should alarm you in the fact of His coming to others 
who do need Him ? If you are sound, why should 
you be troubled when the physician passes you to 
visit the sick ? 

Inf. But the act of forcing my conscience to come 
to a judgment according to the spiritual law of God, 
not by any inferior criterion, is of itself suflBcient to 
create feelings of misgiving and distrust in one's own 
state. 

Chk. Would you judge the soul by any other law 
than the law of the soul ? "Would you judge a man 
by the law of the wild beast, or the mind by the law 
of a mineral ? 

Inf. Of course not : the soul must be judged by 
the law of its own nature ; that I admit. 

Chr. The Gospel presents the soul that law, and 
entreats it to judge of itself by it. What should 
there be more alarming in such an act to a guiltless 



CHRTSTTANTTY AND MORALITY. 393 

and unfallen soul, than in my presenting the statutes 
against treason to a thoroughly loyal subject ? Ought 
not the soul which has kept the law to rejoice at 
receiving it, for is it not, in fact, the very title in 
right of which it claims the tenure and reversion of 
heaven ? 

Inf. No; for as there is not a living soul that on 
examining the law can conscientiously say it has in 
all points observed either the letter or spirit of its 
enactments, the conscience becomes alarmed. 

Chr. Truly so : the cause of the terror then is the 
conscience, not the Gospel. Ought not Christianity 
in justice, to say nothing of mercy, to lay before the 
eye of your soul the copy of that original law by 
obedience to which you yourself claim heaven ? How, 
unless it does, can your conscience know whether 
you have obeyed or not, whether it is to accuse or 
excuse you, whether you need a Saviour or not? 
You would, I conceive, express indignation if it did 
not as the first step beseech you to consider by the 
light of this law whether the obedience on which you 
rely is solid and faultless or not. If it be, the prom- 
ise of God stands irrevocable to you in your own 
person. If not, the law and your own conscience 
condemn you, not Christianity. Being conscience- 
condemned by your own test, Christianity then 
comes to you as " glad tidings." But she does not 
judge : that is not her province, nor the province of 
Christ now. He is now the Saviour and the Com- 
forter, not the Judge — hereafter he w^U be the judge. 
Now it is the law and the conscience which judge; 
much more, until these two have both judged and 

17-- 



394: CHRISTIANITY AND THE MORAL LAW. 

condemned the man, the man cannot come to Christ 
at all, nor is he at all received by Christ. Christ 
explicitly states, "Unless you are lost, you do not 
need Me ; you are secure of immortality and heaven 
by the promise of God to obedience. That word 
in heaven stands fast for ever and ever. But if you 
are law-condemned, self-condemned; if your heart 
and conscience confirm the justice of that condemna- 
tion, and you know not where to fly for refuge or 
seek for comfort, come to Me : I am your Saviour 
and your God, and will give rest and peace to your 
soul." To suppose that Christ and His Gospel came 
to accuse, condemn, and judge, is a complete subver- 
sion and misunderstanding of the whole purport of 
His Divine mission. He most emphatically abjured 
all jurisdiction whatever in this sense, as being utterly 
the reverse of His purposes in coming in an Incarnate 
state from heaven to man : " Woman ! hath no man 
condemned thee? 'No man. Lord. Neither do I 
condemn thee : go and sin no more." He left judg- 
ment to the law of God, which had from the first 
been given to man ; so far from interfering with its 
power and prerogatives. He constantly declared it 
must to its least particle be obeyed, and would, to 
its smallest tittle, be fulfilled ; He magnified it by 
bowing His own neck to its stroke, and yielding up 
His own soul to its justice. 

Inf. But if no man can keep the law, to what end 
was it given ? 

Chr. The man Christ Jesus has kept it ; kept it 
as man, and, therefore, He in His own right claims 
and possesses heaven ; in Him, as the sinless man. 



CHRISTIANITY AND THE MORAL LAW. 393 

God has veriiied His promise to obedience ; over 
Him, because He was sinless, death lost all power in 
the grave. Could we, like Clirist, keep the law, like 
Christ we should in our own right ascend to the 
land of everlasting life. But He is the only one who 
has done so. Fulfilling the perfect will and law of 
God, He attained the promise for himself as the man 
Christ Jesus ; then, having so attained. He laid down 
that sinless life for us, that, as the second Adam, He 
might be to us the beginning of that life eternal due 
to obedience, as the first Adam had been of the 
death due to disobedience. 

Inf. But, as you say no other man has ever ful- 
filled the Law, of what practical use, therefore, was 
it to reveal it to mankind, seeing they were in a state 
incapable of paying obedience to it ? 

Chr. That very incapability was the demonstra- 
tion of their state. The consciousness of such state 
produced by comparing their life with the righteous- 
ness which the law exacted, formed that preliminary 
conviction which St. Paul calls " the conviction of 
the law\" It constituted, therefore, the revelation 
of a man's nature to himself: it brought home to 
every one individually the fact of the Fall in his 
own person. The more strenuously a man attempted 
to obey its requisitions, the more profoundly would 
the inevitable failure impress him with the necessity 
of looking elsewhere than to himself for the restora- 
tion of this nature and its redemptibility for the in- 
heritance promised to obedience. Irs end, therefore, 
in this respect, w^as to bring a man thi'ough his own 
conscience to Christ. 



396 CHRISTIANITY AND THE MORAL LAW. 

Inf. Tour religion, of course, calculated upon this 
result. No conscience pretends to be altogether free 
from the sense of some violation or other of the 
moral and spiritual law ; no man's conscience, there- 
fore, would permit him to advance a claim to heaven 
on the ground of moral perfection. 

Chr. How, moreover, can moral excellency be more 
highly honored than by Christianity addressing itself 
thus to the most moral of men? ^' High as you 
deem your moral worth to be, it can make no pre- 
tension to have attained the standard of heavenly 
righteousness. Exalted as it may be in your own 
opinion, it is a very low kind indeed of holiness com- 
pared with that true loveliness of the soul which 
alone qualifies for the presence and society of God." 
The absolute rejection by Christianity of the most 
advanced phase of human morality as unworthy 
tlie name of righteousness in the judgment of God, 
conveys to my mind the strongest and most elevated 
idea of what the righteousness of the soul and the 
purity of heaven really are. Except for this revela- 
tion to us of the Divine standard, every little society 
and clique, every individual might debase morality 
and moral worth down to the practices, conven- 
tionalism, or usages of himself and his interests. 
The fact that in the heathen world this was the 
result, is apparent from the very words " morals, 
morality," meaning to them nothing more than the 
habits or the prevalent manners of this or that in- 
dividual family or people. The man who would 
claim heaven as being fit on the score of his own ex- 
cellence to live forever with God and the Angels, 



CHRISTIANITY AND THE MORAL LAW. 397 

appears to us Christians to entertain very extraordi- 
nary ideas of the holiness of heaven, and to labor 
under a total misconception of wherein the real value 
of all morality consists. 

Inf. In what does it consist except in its being 
conducive to a man's own good? 

Chr. Take the most moral of men, one guilty of 
the fewest immoral thoughts and actions, one that 
rests all his religion and respectability on his moral- 
ity ; what, I beg, of all his morality would be left 
possible for him in heaven ? Nothing of that which 
we call morality can have existence there. The notion 
of present moral excellences being either excellences 
or existences iu heaven, carries on the face of it the 
assumption of absurdity. How can such virtues as 
chastity, temperance, sobriety, honesty, almsgiving, 
respect for social decorum — all that circle of qualities 
which in this corporeal life constitute what we now 
mean by morality — have place or being in the spirit- 
ual natures and the Christ-pervaded realm where God 
is all in all ? The morality of the present existence, 
on which you would thus found religion, perishes 
with the present system of things. It dies with our 
dust at the very moment Christianity ascends in life 
and immortality to a state too high, and a develop- 
ment too glorious to admit the possibility of such 
moralities among its conditions. 

Inf. In what, then, does the worth of morality 
consist? So far from gaining heaven, it cannot even, 
it seems, rise above the earth. Dissolving with our 
dissolution, to connect its subject-matter with aught 
in heaven is evidently ridiculous. 



398 CHRISTIANITY AND THE MORAL LAW. 

Chr. The real value of the moral law consists in 
its having been made by God the test to the soul of 
its love to Him. '' If ye love me, ye will keep my 
commandments." ''Thon shalt love the Lord thy 
God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, with all 
thy strength, with all thy mind : this is the first and 
great commandment. And the second is like to it. 
Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these 
two commandments hang all the law and the proph- 
ets." The observance of the moral law, unless it 
originates, proceeds, and ends in this love of the soul 
to God, unless its love to God be the cause and 
motive of its morality, however serviceable to our- 
selves and society in its present state, is utterly 
valueless to the soul in a future state. 

Inf. You raise the question above my immediate 
field of view. 

Chr. Is it not reasonable to presume that God, in 
selecting the test of our individual love to Him, 
should select one, the observance of which would, at 
the same time, be an inestimable blessing and ad- 
vantage to mankind at large ? 

Inf. Very reasonable. 

Chr. But it is very possible that a man may ob- 
serve this test without the slightest care or reference 
to the original object of its institution simply for the 
sake of its indirect and collateral advantages. A 
man may thus be thoroughly moral, and yet also 
thoroughly destitute of even a spark of devotion 
or affection to God. 

Inf. a common, a very common case. 

Chr. There may exist, therefore, the greatest mo- 



CHRISTIANITY AND THE MOKAL LAW. 399 

rality without the least religion. Such a person be- 
ing moral for his own purposes, not from a spirit of 
love and attachment to his Creator, cannot be ad- 
judged to fulfil the proper end of morality. He 
uses it as an expedient of mere worldly selfishness. 
God is thrown aside, himself and his family alone 
considered. With his death the advantages of such 
observance cease and determine. Having never 
connected morality with God in any sense, it is to 
his soul worth nothing, and its benefits as mere 
morality die with him. 

Inf. Then a thoroughly moral man in this sense 
has no more prospect of heaven than an immoral 
man, supposing both to be equally destitute of any 
higher principle than nature or morality. 

Chr. It is so. But on the other hand, if a man 
observe the moral law in evidence of his love to Him 
who has given it as the test of such love, the blessings 
of such obedience in Christ are eternal. The moral 
law itself and its temporal benefits, as in the contra- 
ry case, die with him in the grave ; but the Religion 
of that law — the love of God in the soul — ascends 
and lives and receives its full fruition in heaven in 
the union of the soul with the God of its love. Moral- 
ity is thus in itself transient; religion imperishable. 
It is the Love of God which alone constitutes true 
religion, and it is religion which alone communicates 
to morality its own imperishable value. 

We have now, I believe, examined the catalogue 
of your objections against Christianity in order and 
succession. Before we break up our conference, 
permit me in my turn to suggest a few very practical 



400 ESTFIDELITY PRACTICALLY TESTED. 

objections against Infidelity. Will you engage to 
teach and rule your family for six months on infidel 
principles ? Will you call in your wife, your sons, 
daughters, and servants, and inculcate upon them, as 
solid truth and sound philosophy, the principles ad- 
vocated by these infidel authors, l^ewman and oth- 
ers : " That there is no God, no Christ, no Holy Spirit, 
no heaven, no hell, no future judgment; that the 
Bible is a myth, the Gospels a forgery, the Apostles 
impostors, Christianity priestcraft, the Sacraments 
magical delusions; that God has never spoken to 
man, nor cares what any man thinks, says, or does ; 
that vice and virtue, good and evil, are equally indif- 
ferent to Him, and that He neither has now, nor ever 
will He make any distinction between them ?'' Will 
you undertake to teach them this ? 

Inf. Clearly it would never do. 

Chr. It ought to do if Infidelity be true. You 
just now affirmed that Infidelity was freedom, and 
Keligion slavery. Release your family and establish- 
ment from the " slavery " of Religion, and initiate 
them into the " freedom" of Infidelity. Why should 
you alone be "free?" You eulogize Infidelity in 
theory, why do you shrink from putting it into 
practice ? 

Inf. I should regret for many reasons disturbing 
the religious convictions of my family, especially 
of the female branches of it; for I admit Christi- 
anity to be the support and elevating power of 
womanhood. 

Chr. That is, for half the world; the half that 



INFIDELITY PRACTICALLY TESTED. 401 

• 

form, mould, and refine the other and coarser half; 
— a large admission. Try the experiment, then, on 
your valet. Train him carefully in the Infidel cate- 
chism. Tell him in plain English style what these 
authors tell you in the obscure German style ; in- 
struct him that all he has ever hitherto heard and 
believed in the Bible or the Church, is an imposition 
on his credulity ; that there never was any com- 
mandment against lying, theft, or murder ; that such 
as pass for the commandments were invented seven 
or eight hundred years after Moses, if there ever 
was such a man, died; and especially, that Jesus 
Christ was what Newman delineates Him. You 
talk much about the ^' sincerity" of Christians ; here 
is a test for the sincerity of Infidels in Infidelity, — 
one easily tried within your own home. Will you 
venture it ? 

Inf. No. 

Chr. Decidedly your " no" is very emphatic. I 
am requesting nothing out of the way, only that you 
will teach your servant the principles of Infidelity in 
the same manner that Christian families teach their 
servants the principles of Christianity ; that you 
would, for instance, instead of the Scriptures, read 
Strauss, Foxton, Paine, or Yoltaire to them. And 
this, if you are sincere and consistent, you ought to 
do. K you feel Infidelity to be a blessing, impart it 
to them, and, above all, see they practise it. Take 
your theory out of the stable and put it into harness. 
After your valet has thoroughly comprehended that 
there is no Divine prohibition against robbery and 



402 INFIDELITY — PRACTICALLY TESTED. 

assassination, show him the contents of your bureau, 
then go, yourself, to sleep, and let the instruction 
work. 

Inf. You put an extreme case. 

Chr. Extreme ! I am putting the most common, 
the most domestic case I can suggest — master and 
servant — a case for every home and establishment in 
the kingdom. On Infidel principles, why should not 
your valet practise upon you your own teaching? 
On the principles which reject a future life and in- 
evitable judgment as priestcraft and delusion, what 
should prevent him from rifling your bureau and 
stabbing you in your slumbers to the heart ? 

Inf. The chance, or rather certainty, of being de- 
tected and hanged. 

Chr. What is the daily pay of a private soldier ? 

Inf. a shilling a day. 

Chr. The sum for which your valet risks his life 
is perhaps a thousand pounds. ]lTow, so far as mere 
death is concerned, which, according to Infidelity, is 
the end-all, what reason can you assign why your 
valet is not more justified in chancing his life for a 
thousand pounds than the soldier is for a shilling ? 
By his master's principles nothing but annihilation 
and insensibility follow death ; the soldier risks that 
death for a shilling ; the valet for twenty thousand 
shillings. If the soldier escapes being shot, he gets 
but the one ; if the valet escapes being hanged, he 
gets the twenty thousand. If it comes to the worst 
with both, the soldier dies for the shilling, the 
valet for the thousand pounds. On Infidel princi- 
ples the infamous murderer is thus, whether he 



INFIDELITY PRACTICALLY TESTED. 403 

escape or hang, a wiser calculator than the gallant 
soldier. 

Inf. Christianity itself cannot always prevent such 
murders. 

Che. Infidelity produces them. On the principles 
of Infidelity they are not " murders," they are specu- 
lations in which a man stakes his life for so much 
money against the police and the law. Except for 
Christianity, where now we have one, we should 
have a hundred such instances. But Infidelity, by 
and out of its own principles, as naturally generates 
crime as the root of the deadly nightshade does the 
poisonous berries of the plant. An intellectual In- 
fidel is certain to be guilty of intellectual crime, and 
almost certain to be guilty of moral crime, for his Intel- 
lect will reason out Infidelity into act. If you escaped 
from such an attempt on your life as I have sup- 
posed, your Infidelity incapacitates you from putting 
any further question to your servant than this, " Had 
you no fear of the gallows?" He replies, ''None; 
why should I have ? what is the gallows but death ? 
what is death but extinction and insensibility ? This 
is the only world ; why should not I as w^ell as your- 
self make the most of it ? Why should you be the 
master and I the servant, except because you have 
money ! To be my own master, to make the most 
of this the only life, I must have money ; I tried for 
yours." " And you will be executed for it." " What 
of that, sir ? I shall feel nothing after it ; I should 
have been weak to have thrown my life away, like 
the rank and file of the army, for a shilling ; but a 
thousand pounds and a run to America were worth 



404 INFIDELITY PRACTICALLY TESTED. 

the risk ; and if I escape, as I still may, I may ven- 
ture it again rather than be a drudge for life." This 
would be coarse, vulgar reasoning, but on your In- 
fidel premises quite unanswerable. This is your do- 
mestic " hero." 

Inf. You are assuming for granted that Christi- 
anity would deter such a character from crime. 

Che. What makes him such a character at all, but 
the total absence of Christian faith? You confess 
that despite every defence you can erect against the 
positive revelations of a future state in the Scriptures 
and teaching of Christ, that teaching penetrates into 
and often agitates your heart. The mass of mankind 
— such as your servant is — do not irritate and weary 
themselves with petty distinctions or petty objections 
in religion : they proceed upon its broad, massive, 
prominent truths ; against them they never think of 
fabricating barriers for themselves of verbal wind and 
metaphysical obscurities. From their infancy they are 
taught and believe " it is appointed unto man once to 
die, and after death the judgment." And such faith 
does, as a matter of fact, prevent the intrusion of 
even criminal ideas and intentions into their minds, 
which now, by a life-long habit of Faith, rest as nat- 
urally for support upon the Scriptures as their feet do 
on the solid earth. 

Again, let us extend the experiment. Infidels 
are singular in this respect : they compose and pub- 
lish a long treatise in favor of Infidelity ; they pre- 
sent it to the nation : a plain, practical man takes 
it up and asks, " Has Mr. Newman or Mr. Hennell 
ever tried to work out this Infidel theory of his 



INFIDELITY PRACTICALLY TESTED. 405 

in practice? Merchants, agriculturists, manufac- 
turers, in introducing a new scheme or mode of 
operations in their respective provinces, refer to their 
own experience of its working, in order to recom- 
mend it to the public judgment and adoption. Has 
Mr. Newsman ever ' farmed ' or worked a parish on 
the principles he here lays down — that the Scriptures 
are false, and Jesus Christ a myth or an impostor ? 
If not, what does the man mean by publishing stuff on 
paper which will not stand a day's trial of real work ? 
If he has, why does he not supply us with the result?" 

Inf. You would not expect them to answer that 
challenge. 

Che. Is it not a challenge Christianity daily not 
only submits to, but what she incessantly entreats 
the world to give her, that she may accept it ? Is 
not every parish such a challenge, such an accept- 
ance ? Infidelity, in its self-complacency, sits down 
in a closet, imagining it the easiest thing to devise a 
quasi-religion, which can face the rough attritions 
and unceremonious probations of the world. '' Preach 
the Gospel to every creature." How easy that 
sounds! but immediately it attempts to substitute 
something else than the Gospel to be so preached, it 
discovers itself in a dead-lock. It casts its eye on 
every human work of wisdom, science, philosophy, 
but, somehow or other, none of these can stand being 
preached upon, preached against, analyzed, torn into 
fragments, day after day, century after century, to 
Jew, Greek, Eoman, Celt, Briton, German, Hindoo, 
Negro, Indian, every phase of mind and civilization, 
yet remain as fresh, as vital, as keen and powerful 



406 INFIDELITY PRACTICALLY TESTED. 

a two-edged sword to the spirit of man, as it was 
when its first accents from the Temple Porch wrung 
forth the cry for salvation. "Men and brethren, 
what shall we do ?" Compare the number of pulpits 
in the world, among high and low, rich and poor, 
the taught and untaught, the town and country, the 
refined and the barbarous, with the number of uni- 
versities, colleges, academies of arts and sciences ; 
the disproportion will give us some conception of the 
Gospel as that only thing of Light which "can be 
preached to every creature." Nothing else can be : 
substitute what you will, instead of proving as the 
Gospel, the fire of God to the altar-fuel of the uni- 
versal soul of man, it will drop as destructively as 
poison on the tongue, or as inefiectively as water on 
the rock. I should wish, therefore, to know what 
Infidelity intends to preach from every parish pulpit 
instead of the Gospel : what it intends to visit with 
into every house : what to teach with to every child : 
what to comfort with to every sick and dying bed : 
w^hat to rebuke with to every shameless and dangerous 
character : what to convert with to every penitent ? 
At a death-bed, for instance, what has it to say or im- 
part of hope, consolation, or strengthening to the soul? 

Inf. That would not be the place for it to speak. 

Ckr. Something must and will speak there to the 
soul. Why does Infidelity muffle its face up ? why 
does its tongue cleave to the roof of its mouth ? why 
is it a voiceless and fearful conscience when the 
Angel of Christianity is pouring forth the rich treas- 
ures of eternal truth, bringing down its God to the 
soul, opening the gates of heaven, changing the 



INFIDELITY PRACTICALLY TESTED. 407 

grave to victory and the sting of death into the 
sceptre of immortality ? All this, again, is practical 
— occm's in Great Britain alone a thousand times 
every day, for such is the average of deaths per day 
in our island — and at every death either Christianity 
or Infidelity must minister. Now why does not the 
intellectual infidel form as it were a parish, preach 
Infidelity from the pulpit, and carry Infidelity to the 
cradles, the hearth-stones, and bed-sides of every 
family in the parish ? Why is he afraid to reduce to 
practice what he is not afraid to publish? The real 
reason is, he is perfectly conscious that, if he did so 
successfully, that parish would, in twelve months' 
time, be a local hell. His own life would not be 
worth a week's purchase. Yet you tell us of the 
"Intellect of Infidelity"- — the intellect that cannot 
govern a parish of five hundred souls, except to 
dissolve, ruin, and literally damn every thing it 
acts successfully upon — be it the servant, the master, 
the family, or the society — an " Intellect" that can- 
not stand up in a pulpit, or communicate a word of 
solace when solace is most needed and most precious ! 
an Intellect that cannot find one champion in all 
its ranks to do that on its own principles — instruct, 
elevate, and govern a certain society of souls — which 
thousands of Christian curates of ordinary abilities 
do on Christian principles, for innumerable parishes 
in every part of the globe ! Whence is this difi'er- 
ence ? K in the '^ Intellect," or power of government, 
what a despicable thing Infidel intellect must be ! If 
in Infidelity itself, what a despicable thing Infidelity 
must be ! 



408 INFIDELITY PRACTICALLY TESTED. 

Ikf. There appears to me great weight due to this 
part of your argument. 

Chr. Tou will, perhaps, as a rich man, having 
some stake in the preservation of law and property 
in the country, see still greater weight in the third 
and final application of it. Let us extend Infidelity 
beyond the family and the parish to the whole mass 
of society — to the people. Tou are rich : the great 
majority of the people are poor — so poor that hard 
and continuous labor barely enables them to pro- 
cure the necessaries of subsistence. Supposing them 
to be Infidels as well as yourself, why should not the 
valet's reasoning with reference to your bureau be as 
validly applied by them to the whole of your prop- 
erty? Why should they not seize your land and 
fortune, and enjoy them themselves ? 

Inf. My answer is the same — the law would pro- 
ceed against them. 

Chr. Such as the answer is, it will not hold here. 
An individual is not, but a people are, the law : an 
Infidel people. Infidel law. Why should the law 
proceed against them ? 

Inf. Because, in brief, it is the law. 

Chr. And if the law were altered, so as to legiti- 
mize the robbery of the rich, to declare it no 
crime at all, but rather a restitution of property to 
the right original owners, the men of labor, the 
people, what then ? 

Inf. The law reversed ! 

Chr. The Social maxim of Infidelity in France 
was, "All property is robbery." During the first 
revolution, in the reign of infidel reason or intellect, 



INFIDELITY PRACTICALLY TESTED. 409 

which was also the Reign of Terror, that maxim 
became the law and practice of the State. Within 
the last six years it has again been attempted to 
make it the law of the State, and such attempt was 
only crushed by deluging the streets of Paris with 
blood. Am I not correct ? Are not the facts I 
state perfectly undeniable ? Infidelity in religion is, 
in this age, Red Republicanism or Communism in 
politics, and its fundamental principle is, " All prop- 
erty, all capital is robbery : its recovery and distri- 
bution among the people is not robbery, but right 
and just restitution. 

Inf. Tour facts are correct ; proceed. 

Che. The Socialists have proved themselves very 
hard, straightforward, matter-of-fact men in carrying 
out those principles, have they not ? So much so, 
that they left France no alternative between Red 
Republicanism and Absolute Despotism. France 
chose the latter, she was reduced to that choice by 
Infidelity. We are speaking of things before our 
eyes on the other side of the Channel. 

Inf. But we have comparatively few Socialists in 
England. 

Che. Just as many as we have Infidels, neither 
more nor less. And it is to this point I specially re- 
quest your attention. If Infidelity is right, the Red 
Socialist is right : if his premises are true, his infer- 
ences are correct. They, like you, are Infidels : they 
have no '' weaknesses," no " fear" of God ; they do 
not believe in such " absurdities" as the future judg- 
ment and everlasting life. They hold this life to be 
the only one, the only chance of enjoyment : they 

18 



410 rNTIDELITY PKACTICALLY TESTED. 

utterly deny all responsibility of the soul to God, or 
any further existence than the present. Now answer 
the Red Republican or the Chartist on the common 
principles you both hold of Infidelity. Why, this 
world being the only one, this life the only life, 
there being no God, or one to whom vice and virtue 
are equally indifi*erent, should you be permitted to 
retain and enjoy your five thousand per annum, to 
revel in every luxury, and to gratify every indulgence, 
while they — who are a hundred to one in numbers 
against you — should still continue to toil and slave, 
to hunger and thirst, to see their wives and children 
shivering with cold and penury on less, perhaps, 
than twenty pounds per annum ? Why should all the 
labor and misery be theirs, all the ease, profit, and 
pleasure yours ? Why should this confessedly fright- 
ful disparity be submitted to ? Now these men have 
numbers on their side against the rich : they are their 
equals in bodily, and perhaps in mental strength. 
They come to you, not speaking of God in any way : 
nor do you. It is about to be simply a struggle be- 
tween two men, both of them without God in this 
world or faith in the next. They demand a redistri- 
bution of your property among them. How would 
you answer them ? 

Inf. I would pistol them as I would a wild beast. 

Chr. Exactly ; and they you. This is " the free, 
happy, independent life" you would soon realize, 
were all your fellow-citizens in England Infidels like 
yourself. It is evident, on Infidel principles, the rich 
Infidel is at the mercy of the poor one ; the question 
between them can only be decided as it has been 



ESTFIDELITY PK ACTIO ALLY TESTED. 411 

in France — by physical force ; and the contest be- 
tween them would be chronical ; it would be period- 
ically revived as long as both acknowledged no other 
maxims than those of Infidelity. Observe, therefore, 
if Infidelity be right, the poor Infidel, the man of 
labor, the man of physical power, is logically justi- 
fied in becoming a communist and applying to your 
property, to all property, the principles of commu- 
nism. For if this life be the only life, and God cares 
nothing for human actions, it would argue sheer 
imbecility on the part of the infidel communist to 
permit any one man to monopolize his 100,000Z. 
per annum while 100,000 better, stronger, more res- 
olute men were, by mere legalities, changeable at 
any time by getting the Legislature into their own 
hands, proscribed to lives of ceaseless work and 
thankless indigence. You, as a man of wealth and 
position, enjoy the full advantages of the sanctity 
with which Christianity in this country invests life 
and property : but — pardon me for saying so — you 
not only shirk all acknowledgments of your heavy 
debt to it, but you advocate yourSelf and encourage 
in others, principles, the application of which by the 
masses of society — the poor at your own door — to 
yourself, would, in a very brief period, bring your 
neck to the lamp-post and your property to paupers 
or the flames. Yet this again is the " intellect" of 
Infidelity ! I for my part know no fool so shallow 
or short-sighted as a rich man professing or encour- 
aging Infidelity ; and he himself would be the first 
to confess as much, if Christianity once stood aside 
and let him by himself fight the battle of rich versus 



412 INFIDELITY PRACTICALLY TESTED. 

poor irresponsibility. I consider every one of these 
infidel publications wliicli you have the infatuation 
to pile round you in the light of so many incendiary 
brands, requiring only the hand of an infidel laborer 
or servant to wrap you and your family in a shroud 
of fire. A rich man an Infidel ! a man proclaiming 
to characters of every description that there is no 
Divine commandment against robbery and murder ! 
'' It is only a forgery of the reign of Hezekiah !" So 
ITewman affirms ; and so you, the rich Infidel, would 
trumpet in the streets of London and proclaim from 
the roof of JSTewgate ! It is fortunate for you such 
" intellect" makes few Englishmen proselytes to its 
principles. 

Inf. Christianity in its appeal to property has cer- 
tainly the advantage over Infidelity. 

Chr. I am at a loss to conceive what shadow of 
advantage Infidelity can bring to property, or what 
comparison of any kind can, in this respect, be insti- 
tuted between it and Christianity. Infidelity at work 
means the abolition of property and the dissolution of 
society — but what I desire to impress upon you is, 
that such abolition and dissolution correctly and legit- 
imately ensue from the premises and principles of In- 
fidelity. To this you seem to be blind : you appear 
totally unconscious that in arguing on your own prin- 
ciples with the communist, he is palpably and com- 
pletely your master ; wrenching with irresistible force 
from your hand the sword you have forged and at- 
tempt to wield against Christianity, he plunges it with 
instantaneous and mortal effect into your own bosom. 
And I again and again demand, on the principles of 



mriDELITY PRACTICALLY TESTED* 413 

Infidelity, why should he not ? Yon are mnte, or your 
sole reply is that which, in other countries, has been 
repeatedly submerged in torrents of blood or scat- 
tered to the winds by the roar of artillery. 

Inf. Reserving the expression of my decision on the 
other topics of our investigation, I will admit Chris- 
tianity to be the most solid guaranty the world pos- 
sesses for the preservation of law and order in society. 
I will even add, that being so, it must be the 
direct interest, as well as the duty of every man of 
means and influence to support its claims and ex- 
tend its principles through every grade of the com- 
munity — and this admission ought, I think, at pres- 
ent, to satisfy you. 

Chr. It ought not to satisfy yourself. Through 
how many hands has this property of yours since the 
Conquest passed ? 

Inf. Perhaps a hundred. 

Che. And it will pass through hundreds of others. 
How much of it have your ancestors taken with them 
out of the world ? How much will you take ? 

Inf. Nothing. 

Che. Property really means that which is "your 
own." Now it is only by a conventional deception 
of language, than which you know nothing is more 
wilfully common, that you can call this estate, through 
which you are only one of so many passers through, 
your property. Extend the idea a little further, and 
the passengers in the railroad carriages yonder, 
which are at this moment shooting through it, may 
as well call it their property, the difference is simply 
one of time, — between minutes and years, — not 



414 INFIDELITY- — PRACTICALLY TESTED. 

between defeasible and indefeasible possession and 
nsufruct. If you support Christianity by reason of 
its being the only power that binds the conscience 
itself to the defence of property, the advantages 
which accrue to you from it will, like the morality of 
the soulless character to which we referred, surcease 
to you with this life. You will be using — wisely, I 
grant in your generation — the love and grace of God 
to the souls of men for selfish temporary purposes of 
your own. That alone is your true property which 
can never be taken away from you, which cannot be 
separated from yourself : over which neither death 
nor time has the power of dissolution or removal ; 
the possession and treasures of which you can 
dispatch beforehand to precede your own arrival in 
heaven ; I mean the soul with its virtues and works 
in Christ. To consider any thing except the soul 
yourself, or any thing of which you cannot transfer a 
single particle with you into the future state of your- 
self " your property," is weakly permitting yourself 
to be imposed upon by the common courtesy of 
worldly language. The hoUowness of the Chris- 
tianity which is only such for the sake of its prop- 
erty is certain to betray itself, and the very object 
of its hypocrisy, though in the especial point of 
secular security it may succeed, will almost as cer- 
tainly be turned by some process of God, as easy as 
it is inscrutable, into the reverse of a blessing or 
source of happiness to the man who thus practises 
with the religion of self-sacrifice and the Cross. It 
is within your knowledge how gravely Christianity 
deals with mere riches and mere rich men. While 



CONCLUSION. 415 

most solemnly forbidding a grain of their gold, or a 
blade of their grass being coveted or tonched, it de- 
clares that, in the present constitution of our fallen 
nature, " it is hard for the rich to enter the kingdom 
of heaven." And all experience confirms the truth 
that there is less of real nobility of spirit, less large- 
ness of mind, less faith towards God, and practical 
good towards man in the rich, than in those who are 
" not rich in this world." If the religion of Christ 
allows the conjunction of the terms, "sl rich Chris- 
tian," it certainly does not allow the possibility of 
such a conjunction as that of a hoarding Christian. 

Inf. What say you, then, of those men who live 
only to die worth their hundreds of thousands ? 

Chr. Let them judge themselves. It is not they 
who are alone to blame. The servile respect for mere 
wealth, which, to a great extent, debases both the 
religious and commercial world, is of itself sufiicient 
to make infidels and revolutionists of the poor and 
industrial classes. The constant witnessing of it in 
the highest classes of society, is of itself enough to 
make the acquisition of that which is thus bowed- 
down to and acknowledged as their master by their 
superiors, the passionate object of the envy and 
cravings of the lower classes of the community ; and 
if they once become Infidel, they become also and 
remain " the dangerous classes ;" in which case the 
shortest means of becoming rich will approve them- 
selves as the best also to their principles and judg- 
ment. Did Christianity do no more than lift up a 
voice of unceasing protest against so degrading a 
standard of worth, its value would, even in this single 



416 coKCLrsioN. 

respect, be incalculable ; but it also effects its own 
teachings and convictions in the hearts of tens of 
thousands of the Christian poor. Simple faith in 
the Gospel destroys at once that spirit of dissatisfac- 
tion arising from a false valuation of things which lies 
at the root of social turbulence and civil conspiracy. 
If the masses of England were not in the main Chris- 
tian, the laws and constitution of England would not 
be worth the paper on which they are written : it is 
the faith of the people that makes the government, 
not the government the people. 

" Quid vanse sine Moribus prosint Leges ? 
Dis te minor em quod geris, imperas f 
Hinc omne Principium, hue refer Exitum.'' 

To limit, therefore, your acceptance of Christianity 
to its protective aspect of your temporalities, would 
infer a withering kind of wisdom for yourself. It 
may increase the amount of moral guaranty which 
insures you a life-interest in your estate ; but re- 
ceived in this mercenary spirit, of what avail would 
it be to yourself, to your soul ? If, property being 
the motive, you embrace Christianity because it is a 
shield to it, you may as readily throw it away when, 
by doing so, there is a prospect of dishonestly ac- 
quiring the property of another. Christ has nothing 
salvatory to do with your soul, nor your soul with 
Christ, in a proceeding which thus tampers with 
right motives and holy obligations. The benefits of 
it are as transient as your tenure. If, being con- 
vinced of the superiority of Christianity as the firmest, 
and beyond comparison the cheapest, constitution for 
a civilized people, with all the intricate combina- 



CONCLUSION. 417 

tions of personal and real rights involved in the 
action of civilization, you are disposed by giving 
your support to its institutions and ordinances to 
show yourself a Christian, will it not be much more 
satisfactory to your conscience, as a matter of good 
faith and honesty towards God, to be a Christian at 
once ? If you think of doing a Christian work, why 
not do it on Christian principles, do it as a proof 
and memorial of the love of God to your soul and of 
the responsive love of your soul to God ? If Chris- 
tianity be of God, such a work will both precede 
and follow you to heaven ; it is as immortal as the 
soul, as deathless as the Saviour ; of it and the 
benediction of the Almighty attached to it, no 
change in body, time, or circumstances can deprive 
you ; it has in its very act and completion become 
an imperishable part of your eternal existence. 
Whatever you do, therefore, let it not be factitious ; 
be it little or great, let it, at all events, for the sake 
of the highest part of yourself, be done on the right 
motive, the true principle of a Divine and holy faith 
in God. 

Inf. I will, then, in trying some Christian work as 
an experiment of conscience, do so as a Christian and 
not as a politician. 

Chr. Felix esto : you will at least discover that 
whatever sensations may be connected with other 
reminiscences of your life, the action of " the gifts 
of God" in the soul entail no repentance. 



We have thus brous^ht our aro^uments to a conclu- 
sion. We first showed what that standard of the 

18- 



418 CONCLUSION. 

Orthodox Faith is which is professed by Catholic or 
universal Christendom ; we drew attention to the 
fact that the Unity of Faith, expressed by this rule 
or standard, includes nearly one half of the present 
population of the globe ; we pointed out the Standard 
of Faith in the Church of England to be no other 
than this of universal Christendom — the Scriptures 
and the Three Creeds. We then proceeded to analyze 
and dispose of the most prominent objections urged 
by Infidelity against Christianity as contained in 
these standards. We dealt first with the exceptions 
taken to certain special portions of the Scriptures, 
and secondly, with those against the general doc- 
trines of Christianity as summed up and delivered in 
the Creeds. In doing so, we examined the nature 
and tendency of the principal opinions of Infidelity 
in its modern form and aspect. Lastly, we proved 
Infidelity, in any form whatever, to be logically and 
necessarily productive of debasement and destruction 
alike in the individual, the family, the parish, and 
the state. If our conference should induce you to 
calmly reconsider the pretensions of such Infidelity 
to " intellect," or lead you to view that great System 
of Spiritual Order comprehended under the name of 
Christianity as no less the law of God than l^ature 
itself, the time occupied in these discussions will not, 
with God's blessing, have been spent in vain. 



INDEX. 



Abraham, had held personal commauication with God, 38 ; why he 
obeyed the command to sacrifice Isaac, 39 ; his faith ours, 44. 

Adam, life of, in the human race, 250. 

Adultery, objection that it was admitted to the Jew, but denied the 
Christian, answered, 292. 

Apostles, their manner of dealing with false doctrine, 82 ; with proph- 
ecy, 82 ; the first intellects in spiritual conspiracy, 229 ; false to speak 
of them as mere fishermen, 229 ; more powerful than emperors, 230 ; 
subordinate to St. Peter and St. Paul, 238 ; overthrew the Pagan 
world by their intellect and resolution, 233 ; the spiritual empire 
which they have founded, 234. 

Articles, the Thirty-nine, partial not universal, 9 ; binding on the clergy, 
not on the laity of the Church of England, 9, 10 ; might be added to, 
or cancelled without affecting the orthodoxy of the Church, 10. 

Bible (see Scriptures), not the living priest or Church to man, 322 ; its 
province confounded with that of the Church, the error of schisma- 
tics, 822 ; the transferance of the power and glory of Christ to the 
written record of the Church, as gross a sin as Mariolatry, 324. 

Brahminism, does not pretend to prophecy or miracles, 120 : nor yet 
does Buddhism, 120. 

Canaanites, God's command to exterminate them, 305, 333 ; His justice 
and mercy reconciled in their case, 305-308. 

Carthage, conquest of, not a parallel to that of Jerusalem, 61. 

Cause and Effect, spoken of ignorantly by Infidels, 148 ; no existence 
apart from God, 150; the miracles a proof of this, 150. 

Child, more wonderful than the . universe, 131 ; Christ comes to us in a 
child, 132. 

Christ, His acknowledgment by all nations ever confronting the Jew, 
68 ; His crucifixion the turning point of the spiritual and temporal 
destinies of the Jews, 68 ; the primary sense of every type nnd 
prophecy, 83 ; foretold in the Psalms, 71-81 ; the only one who fills 



420 INDEX. 

up all those prophecies, 86 ; acted so as to bring His life in accord- 
ance with them, 86, 87 ; fills up predictions both of suffering and 
triumph, 87 ; unable, as a mere man, to compel th6 convergence of 
prophecy in His own person, 88 ; as of those of His passion and His 
triumph, 89 ; walled in with prophecy from before birth till after 
death, 90; His resurrection and its consequences proved, 92; His 
worship not explained away by Gibbon, 94; His universal worship, 
95 ; His kingdom, power, and glory inconsistent with mere manhood, 
97; His resurrection explained both as fact and prophecy, 98; im- 
portance of its taking place on the third day, 98-100 ; the stealing of 
His body shown to be impossible, 103-106 ; came to fulfil, not super- 
sede Moses and the prophets, 119 ; puts it in the power of every one 
to decide as to His mission by the prophecies bearing on Him, 120 ; 
if abolished, the Scriptures are without a key, 123; no communion 
with God but through Him, 127, 133; not a "good man," if only a 
man, 208-219 ; His assertions those of Divinity, 211 ; is responsible for 
the effect of His words, 213; neither a deceiver, nor deceived, 214; 
His assertions of His own divinity, 217 ; must be received as God, or 
denounced as the Powder of Darkness, 216-218 ; unless a man believes 
Him to be " very God of very God," he must be damned, 220 ; justi- 
fication by faith in, 222 ; difference to man, if He was crucified as 
man, or God, 224; not a military, but spiritual Messiah, 231 ; Strauss' 
opinion that He is a myth, 232; condescends to man, not only the 
creator, but the recreator, 240 ; His divinity, the Church has never 
receded from, 241 ; if He be God infidelity is perdition, 242; showed 
faith in His own preaching of immortality, 254; even as man, 255. 

Christian (see Christianity), one who believes in the incarnation of 
God, 204. 

Christianity, the defect of books in defence of, v ; practical unity in, 
14 ; the effect of a cause, the crucifixion, 149 ; the only true philoso- 
phy, 164 ; made a more awful thing by the Church than by the Luth- 
erans or abstractionists, 224; its tyranny over conscience, 228; death 
conquered with it, 238 ; a pure delusion, the adulation of man, 239 ; 
if Christ be not God, owes its success to intellect, 242; rests on the 
immortality of the soul, 246 ; truer than mathematics, 248 ; goes be- 
yond PLitonism, 256 ; foresees and guards against every weakness of 
philosophy, 261; is in the Old Testament, 267; "not the thing for 
superior intellects," 320; something broader, higher than the Bible, 
the presence of God in Christ and in men, 321 ; its truth not depend- 
ent upon the accuracy of the writers of the Bible, 323 ; nor upon the 
morals of its ministers, 324; the objection to, on the ground of in- 
consistency, shown to be subversive to infidelity, 329-331 ; its hold 
on the peoples, 331; the guarantee of immortality, 832; Cliristians 
see more in it than do infidels, 342 ; its truths embodied in many re- 



INDEX. 421 

ligions before Christ put his seal to them, 371 ; accepted by men be- 
cause it brought salvation for society in this world, and for individual 
souls in the next, 372; its selfishness explained, 375; the elevating 
power of woman, 400 ; challenges infidelity to a practical test, 405 ; in 
its appeal to property has the advantage of infidelity, 412; the most 
solid guarantee for the preservation of law and order, 413 ; its deal- 
ing with rich men, 414 ; its value in destroying the dissatisfaction 
arising from the valuation of things, 416 ; must not be held solely on 
account of its protective power, 416 ; but Christian work must bo 
done on Christian principles as a matter of honesty, 416. 

Church, of England, its standard in controversy, 4; Catholic, born out 
of the crucifixion, 43 ; its number, and power of the keys, 43,44; 
the subject of prophecy by the same Being who commanded the sacri- 
fice of Isaac, 44 ; types and ritual of the Jewish Church, shadows of 
the Christian, 83 ; those of the Christian, shadows of the Church in 
heaven, 83 ; composed of good and bad, 108-111 ; cannot be confined 
to the good alone, 111-113; we have seen the "gathering," shall also 
see the " severing," 113 ; love, the law of, 304. 

Civilization, mental, test of, the use of Latin and Greek, 129. 

Conscience, makes a man a coward, 226 ; what is it? 229. 

Creation, a mystery even to Infidels after rejecting Christianity, 36. 

Creeds, contain the orthodox faith, 8, 9 ; the standard of unity, 8 ; their 
use, 198. 

Damnation, not the result of sin, but of rejecting the atonement; re- 
jecting Christ as ^^Yery God of very God," 220. 

Death, a misnomer, 273 ; may be only a process of nature to a higher 
life, 337 ; death and disease the avenging of nature's law, 338. 

Deity, cannot reason about, 137 ; no true symbol of in nature, 138 ; no 
definite idea of, apart from Christianity, 138. 

Diabolical possessions, existence of, not to be mistaken for ordinary 
bodily maladies, 192. 

Discussion, order in which it is conducted in this work, 1. 

England, if her people were not Christian, her laws would be value- 
less, 416. 

Enthusiasm, is soul-action ; possessed by Christians, not by Infidels, 35. 

Epistles, written mainly not to impart doctrine, but to correct error, 82. 

Evil, its existence and origin, 291 ; admitted in creation by Christians, 
made a part of God by Infidels, 336. 

Faith, what constitutes, 40 ; ours in Abraham " second-hand," 43 ; as 
a faculty exists in everybody, 221 ; truth of its objective matter con- 
stituted the sine qua non of justification, 222; justification by, the 



422 INDEX. 

maxim of Luther, 223 ; difference between his sense and that of the 
Church, 223; the believing powers of man unfathomable, 227; not 
so much required in the present day as of old, 378 ; the Infidel re- 
quires more than the Christian, 380; the comparison of the two, 
380-382. 

Fatalism, inconsistent with the Almighty, 140-146 ; the Christians, 
168-170 ; none but every word that proceedeth from the mouth of 
God, 170. 

Fear, a sound principle of appeal and penalty, 369 ; of God, what is 
it? fear of hell part of it, 369; does not lead to superstition, 370; 
has made the moral or physical force of nations, 370 ; Rome an in- 
stance, 371. 

France, reduced by despotism to Infidelity, 409. 

God (see Christ), His love never diminished, shown by atoning sacri- 
fice, 33 ; has a right over natural powers and instincts, 37 ; His om- 
niscience, 125; no communication with material nature, 133; varia- 
tion of the idea of God derived from nature, compared with variations 
of interpretations of Scripture and the Cliurch, 134 ; omnipresence, 
omniscience, omnipotence, &c., 135-139; time no element in, 136; 
prescience and omnipotence reconciled, 140; is Almighty, 146-148; 
cause and effect cannot exist apart from Him, 150 ; His power infinite, 
151 ; His sympathy with the perfectijon of man the great doctrine of 
practical religion, 198; terms to define Him, 219; these applied to 
Ciirist, 219 ; as in the universe nothing to a man, 225; as incarnate, 
226 ; as suffering, all powerful, 236 ; never leaves man, 239 ; paternal 
relation, 239 ; not to be viewed in parts, 281 ; His practical justice 
even in punishment, 362 ; love to, moral law the test of, 398 ; love of, 
the true religion, 399. 

Gospel, true understanding to be found in the Greek, 129; terrifies by 
presenting the law to conscience, 391 ; difficulty of substituting a 
quasi one, 405. 

Heaven, has never moved, man has, he must complete the circle to 
return to it, 303 ; new heavens and earth compared with precedent 
nature, 351 ; as much science as prophecy in St. Peter's promise, 362 ; 
gift of, no comparison with gift of the Son of God, 277 ; attainment 
of, dependent on Christ, not morality, 388 ; not the recompense of 
morality, but the gift of mercy, 388 ; a legal right, if legal obedience 
is kept inviolate, 389 ; a Saviour needed, 392. 

Hell, is a place, in analogy with astronomy, 353 ; a world of fire, per- 
haps in the interior of the earth, 355 ; in it the life or soul must suf- 
fer, 356-359 ; both spiritual and material pain, 358-362 ; why not pro- 
bationary, 362 ; men do not believe in, else would not sin, 367 ; fear 



INDEX. 423 

of, the beginning of wisdom, 369 ; fear of, an essential part of the fear 
of God, 370 ; its existence cannot be denied by arguments from the 
nature of pain, from the distinction between penal and probation- 
ary states, or the laws of analogy, 374. 

Hero worship (see Pantheism), of live men objected to, 317 ; their 
apotheosis, the recognition of the hero being, 318 ; what becomes of 
the "psyche?" 319; resolved into St. Paul's definition of an idol, 
"nothing," 319. 

Hero species of man, may be higher forms of existence than, 337. 

Hollow of the heavens, Druidic tenet, was God, 138. 

Holy Ghost, Operation of inspiration, 277; existence of, 277; proved 
by the emotions of the soul, 278-281. 

Hosea, chap. iii. explained, 176-179. 

Hume, sophisms respecting miracles, 349 ; fallacy concerning the resur- 
rection, 250. 

Husbands and wives, Eoman, 186 ; St. Paul's injunction to, 187. 

Immortality of the soul, a matter of faith, not to be proved, 247 ; of the 
body, 256 ; and of the soul in Christ, 258 ; of the wicked as eternal as 
that of the righteous, 259 ; taught in the Old Testament, 262-265 ; of 
every man, 273, 274. 

Incarnation, of one God held by Christians, of millions, by Infidels, 
205 ; by the heathen, by Buddhism and Brahminism, 205 ; only true 
faith is that which accepts one true incarnation, 205; of man, is the 
incarnation of created spirits, of Christ, that of the creating spirit it- 
self, 206 ; of God in Christ, ever the faith, in some true or corrupt 
form of the human race, 207 ; of Christ, the whole strength of reli- 
gion, 228 ; the most powerful argument to men, 235 ; why the doc- 
trine was adhered to, 235 ; " the crown of that system of adulation to 
human nature, which Christianity is," 237. 

Infidelity, unless proved contrary to sense and reason, must be con- 
fessed to be as rational as Christianity, vii. ; rejects Christianity from 
the number of sects, 6-13 ; most educated Christians have passed 
through it, 35; only two phases in its vocabulary, "I don't know," 
"I don't believe," 98; pure Infidelity does not exist, 313; relative, 
infers belief in the contraries of Christianity, 313; has no idea which 
was not substantiated into idolatry thousands of years ago, 315 ; of 
tiie present day is Pantheism, 315 ; by ignoring the justice of the Al- 
mighty encourages crime, 368 ; cannot guarantee the truth of one of 
its assertions, 375 ; a hazardous investment against both time and 
eternity, 375 ; holds out no inducement to eschew evil and ensue 
good, 375 ; practically tested in government of a family, 400 ; of a 
servant, 401 ; fails at the death-bed, 406 ; cannot, with all its " intel- 
lect," govern a parish, 407 ; or a nation, 408. 



424 INDEX. 

Infidels (see Infidelity), cannot be good subjects, 156 ; make man de- 
pendent on the laws of the universe, 156 ; will not work out their 
theories and present the result, 404. 

Inspiration (see Holy Ghost). 

Intellect, responsibility of, greater than that of morality, 25 ; of Infidels, 
apart from Christianity, has not advanced further than the fetishism 
of Africa, 815 ; the progress of, when left to itself, actual sinks to 
Mars, &c., 317. 

Isolation of man, not possible, 305. 

Jesus (see Christ). 

Jews, only nation preserving certain signs and characteristics, 64 ; even 
if Scripture be thrown aside, we must explain profane history, 66 ; 
why still few in number, 67 ; why Jews, 67 ; why oppressed, 67 ; 
why compelled to see Christ acknowledged in a widening Church, 68 ; 
Christ's crucifixion the hinge of their destinies, 68 ; whole history a 
proof of Divine inspiration of the Pentateuch, and an evidence of 
Christianity, 68, 69; Hosea's prophecy concerning them explained, 
176-179 ; their present destitute religious state, 179. 

Judaism, its truth depends upon that of Christianity, 293-296. 

Judea (see Palestine). 

Justification by Faith, maxim of Luther, 223; churches who held it, in 
his sense, have lapsed into Infidelity or Socinianism, 223 ; the differ- 
ence between the Lutheran, or pseudo-evangelical sense, and that in 
which it is held by the Church, 223. 

Language, the expression of the soul, making a child more wonderful 

than the material universe, 131. 
Law, why given, 394 ; real value of the moral law, 398 ; reason why 

God should select that as a test which would benefit the world, 398. 
'O Aoyos (see Word), may have assumed other forms besides that of the 

race of Adam, 127 ; the medium of the action of the Supreme Being 

upon the world, 127 ; fulness of the expression to a Greek, 128 ; is 

Omnipotence, 228, 
Love, more required now than in days of old, 379. 

Man, his fallen nature must be conceded, 310 ; else the creature is more 

righteous than the Creator, 310; greater beings may be formed out of 

liumun elements, 337. 
Marriai^e (see Polygamy), what constitutes it, 297 ; often a mere civil 

union in Great Britain, 298, 301; the true marriage in heaven, 302; 

the sacramental symbol of the love and union of Christ and the 

Church, 304. 



INDEX. 425 

Martineau, difference between, and Newman, 197, 198 ; accepts a cer- 
tain Jesus, but not that of the Scriptures or Church, 196. 

Messiah (see Clirist), hypothesis that one might be created from the 
prophecies of the Psalms, 86 ; the Messiahsiiip before birth, after 
birth, in life, in death, after death walled in with prophecies, 90 ; the 
pretension of Christ to it, would not have been cared for by the 
Jews if so many prophecies had not met in Him, 90 ; a modern 
one impossible, 91 ; faith of the Christian world for eighteen cen- 
turies built upon a Messiah, 124; the Jews, before Christ, drew the 
same picture of theirs from the Scriptures as does modern Christen- 
dom, 124. 

Miracles, stress which Christ laid on, 118 ; a fair test between Christ 
and Joseph Smith and Mohammed, 119 ; why Mohammed per- 
formed none, 119 ; of Infidelity exceed those of Christianity, 234 ; of 
Scripture compared with those of science, 343; neither Scripture nor 
creeds contain any article so miraculous as those of science, 345 ; 
Hume's sophism respecting them, 849 ; its fallacy shown, 350. 

Mohammed, no prophecy concerning him before his birth, 117; dis- 
claimed all pretension to miracles or prophecy, 117 ; his title of 
*' prophet" explained, 117. 

Morality, if the question to be settled by it, Infidels confess their case 
is hopeless, 21 ; not to be balanced against doctrinal teaching, 24, 25 ; 
excellency of, exalted by Christianity, 396 ; yet unworthy the name of 
righteousness, 396; may exist without religion, 398. 

Moriah, Mt., scene of the sacrifice of Isaac and Christ, 29, 34, 36. 

Mormonism, not Infidelity, 296. 

Nations, judged in this world, individuals in the next, 155 ; and man, 
rights not ignored in the New Testament, 189. 

Natural affection, none in a parent towards a child, unless he has it also 
towards God, 37. 

Nature (see Universe), the medium of God, the Infidel's religion, 57 ; it 
cannot act or predict of itself, 59 ; is ruled by God, 60 ; insufiScient 
to teach about either God or herself, 133-135 ; contrasted with the 
teaching of Scripture, 135 ; cannot hear nor see, 135 ; and matter have 
no other law than the will of God, 150, 151, 153; created to be sub- 
dued by man, 152; no further to serve man than man is the servant 
of God, 153; terms not allowable as 'Violation of natural laws," 
"suspension of ordinary powers," 153; reason cannot conceive why 
nature was created, etc., 157 ; is the transient, Christianity the perma- 
nent form of supernaturalism, 171 ; is more than Scripture the " crux 
jpUloscyphorum^^^ 309 ; the true deity, 314, 333 ; then any individual 
may select his God, 314; hence Pantheism, 313-316; the reverse of 
merciful by war, disease, etc., 335 ; avenges herself the violation of 



426 INDEX. 

her laws, hence the Infidel cannot object to the Christian's God of 
nature doing the same, 339 ; Infidel's deity inexorable, Christian's of 
rare severity, 340 ; indifference of both, 841 ; principles of nature em- 
bodied in Christianity, and revealed in their highest forms, before 
Science discovered them in their lowest, 342 ; as constituted as pres- 
ent, perhaps not the twentieth miracle wrought by the Power above, 
850 ; all present a new miracle, 850. 

Newman, Francis William and John Henry, their moral lives not to be 
weighed in favor of their religious systems, 22-25. 

Newman, Francis William, assertions respecting the prophecies of 
the Pentateuch, 28-59 ; his admission as to the verification of 
some prophecies fatal to Infidelity, 69; denies that the Psalms 
are prophetical of the Messiah, 122; a Eoman Catholic rather 
than an Infidel, 175 ; argument respecting the extermination of the 
Canaanites answered, 180-183; misquotes Scripture, 182; declares 
that the first preachers of Christianity appealed to the inward senses 
as the supreme arbiters, 183 ; that it cannot appeal to any self-sustain- 
ing power, 185 ; not the decisive influence which has raised woman- 
kind, 186 ; that it ignores the rights of men and nations, 189 ; super- 
stitions about witches, etc., derive support from the Bible, 191 ; his 
steps in Infidelity, 194, 195 ; difference between, and Martineau, 195 ; 
disbelieves in Jesus, 195 ; rejection of the creeds his first step in apos- 
tasy, 198 ; his final phase, the doctrine that " all practical religion de- 
pends on the sympathy of God with the perfection of individual 
man," 198; doubts if the gospel narrative be not unjust to Christ, 
199 ; his great dogma shown to be Christ's elementary one, 201 ; reck- 
less in his allegations about Scripture, 821 ; never tried to work out 
his theory, 404. 

New Testament, object of, 82. 

Omniscience (see Christ, God), an abstraction, 125. 

Orthodox faith, vindicated in this work, that of the Anglo-Catholic 

Church of England, vi.; definition of, 6 ; how to find, 7 ; contained 

in the creeds, 8. 



Palestine (see Jews, Judaism), conquest of, by the Romans foretold, 
46, 52, 61 ; change in physical features in accordance with prophecy, 
54, 55, 59 ; one of its rainy seasons now suspended, 54 ; no parallel 
with any other nation conquered by Rome, 61. 

Pantheis!!!, its absurdity, 813; asserted to be the true religion, 314; in 
respect to hero-worship a plagiarism from the Greek mythology, 316 ; 
is idolatry, 817 ; cannot make a hero without becoming Pythago- 
rean, 319. 



mDEX. 4:27 

Parables were prophecies, 107; that of the drag-net an instance, 

107-110. 

Passions, intended to be used, 282 ; abuse sinful, 282-284 ; their depra- 
vation a proof of fallen nature, 286-290. 

Pentateuch (see Newman), declared to be the production of a later age 
than the Mosaic, 45 ; of Hezekiah's, 52. 

St. Peter and St. Paul, originated the illusion, which human nature 
craved, 232; heroes despising death, 233. 

Polygamy (see Marriage), condemned by Christianity, not by Judaism, 
292 ; not a contradiction between the two, 299 ; the bond of marriage 
extended among the Jews, contracted among the Christians, 300 ; il- 
lustrations of the principle, 300. 

Police, Prisons, and Scaffolds, penal not preventive, 372 ; cannot do the 
work of conscience, 373. 

Prayer, the unity of worship in, 14 ; consistent with the omnipotence 
and omniscience of God, 140 ; made to a God able to hear and grant, 
142; difl&culties in it, 146-148 ; a law as great as gravitation, 148 ; the 
order of the spiritual universe, 149 ; how nature is '* overruled" by 
it, 152 ; the fulfilment of the design of nature, 153 ; if granted, but 
not through nature. Infidelity must admit Christianity, 153 ; co-opera- 
tive, not separate from duty, 154. 

Prediction (see Prophecy). 

Profession and Practice, their consistency, 326 ; false ground, 328 ; the 
more contradictory practice is to false profession the better, 329. 

Prophecy (see Pentateuch, Psalms), its evidence vindicated, 27 ; New- 
man's assertion concerning those of the Pentateuch, 28-39 : its two 
senses, 83 ; non-scriptural annals can supply no instance, 121 ; spirit 
of among the Eomans accounted for, 121 ; the element of no religion 
except Christianity, 120-123 ; the Messiah not invented to correspond 
with, 122 ; correspondence acknowledged by nations, 123 ; not iden- 
tical with FataHsm, 161. 

Properly, protected by Christianity, 412 ; deception to call estates '■'■ your 
own," 413 ; that only is yours which death cannot take away, 414. 

Protestantism, ultra-controversalists, when arguing against Eome, ha- 
bitually argue against Christianity, vi. ; the great principle of, 4 ; its 
advocates changeable as Proteus, 3-5. 

Psalms, the Messianic prophecies, 70-81 ; whole book one precal pro- 
phecy of the Messiah, 71 ; passages which refer to Christ, 71-81 ; paeans 
of Christ's victory, 80 ; why not more quotations from, in the New 
Testament, 82 ; expression of suffering, 84; man or Christ portrayed 
in them, 84; those of passion, prophecies of profound suffering, 85; 
only fulfilled in Christ, 86 ; refer to Eesurrection, 105 ; Newman's 
denial that they are fixed on the Messiah, 122. 

Pythagoreanism, infidelity of Pantheism becoming, 319. 



428 IKDEX. 

Eeligion (see Christianity), fetters a man as an infant, 227 ; and through 
life, 228. 

Eepublicanism, Eed, in politics like Infidelity in Eeligion, 409. 

Eesponsibility, individual, a difficulty to the Infidel, 256. 

Eesurrection (see Christ), the vis vitce of Christianity, 39; not ex- 
plained by Gibbon, 94 ; denied as a fact, 98 ; examined both as a fact 
and a prophecy, 98-101 ; Jewish precautions, 102 ; prophecy of, in 
Ps. ii., 105; the fact never disproved, 106; one of the dilemmas of 
Infidelity, 103. 

Eevenge, a depravation of a good passion, 286. 

Eome, would persuade us that Christianity is not maintainable as a 
rational religion, 6 ; responsible for schism, 15. Pagan Eome pre- 
served her moral force as long as her faith in the future separation of 
the good and bad, 371. 

Eussell, Lord William, act upon the life of, involved murder, 288. 

Sacraments, present Christ as 'O Aoyoj, 132 ; by them Christendom re- 
ceives Christ, 132. 

Sacrifice of Isaac, a prophecy fulfilled in Christ, 28-34; its teaching to 
the ancient Churoh, 32 ; not murder, 38 ; why Abraham did not hesi- 
tate, 39 ; Abraham believed the command to be divine from previous, 
we from subsequent evidence, 44 ; identity of it with the crucifixion 
of Christ, 44 ; the visual part of the prophecy fulfilled in the cruci- 
fixion of Christ, the oral part being fulfilled in the acceptance of the 
religion of the Cross, 45. 

Salvation, only through Christ as God incarnate, 220, 224 ; possible to 
all, but attained only by those who attach their faith to the proper 
object, 224. 

Satan, placed on the throne of God by Infidelity, 312. 

Saviour (see Christ). 

Schism, sin of our inherent nature, not of Christianity, 15; Eome 
responsible for the sin of, 15. 

Scripture, not inspired, 1, and the three creeds the banner of the 
Church of England, 5 ; the hold its language has over man, 47 ; stress 
laid, not, as in Shakspeare or Virgil, on the beauty of the language, 
but the truths conveyed, 48 ; no levity in it, 49 ; difi'erent writers, yet 
the tone the same, an evidence of inspiration from one Being, 50 * 
even if extinguished, yet Christ's promise to be with the Church no- 
extinguished, 323 ; right in making future judgment the requisite 
which preserves souls from vice, 368. 

Seneca, predicted the discovery of America, 114 ; his predictions com- 
pared with those of Isaiah, 115. 

Sin, must be forgiven, either in this world or the next, before the soul 
can enter heaven, 386 ; is so by the blood of Christ, 387. 



ESIDEX. 429 

Sin, Original, admitted, 290. 

Sinlessness of man, if believed, man's misery compels the inference 
that there is no God, 309 ; or else He is worse than merciless, 310. 

Slavery, denounced by St. Paul, 190. 

Socialism, its maxim, 408 ; right if Infidelity be true, 409-412. 

Socinians (see Unitarians), not Christians, 203; the philosophy of their 
views examined, 204; their tenet, "Christ a good man," shown un- 
tenable, 208-219. 

Socinianism, the most hopeless of all compromises between truth and 
falsehood, 219. 

Soul, immortality of, a matter of faith not to be proved, 248 ; metemp- 
sychosis of, 319 ; not to be dealt with by external physical preventa- 
tives, 372 ; has immortal needs, 384 ; what God gives it, what Infi- 
delity can offer, 384 ; not content with what contents the body, 385. 

Spiritual manifestations, rampant in the two most advanced "physical- 
philosophy" countries, 194. 

Strabo, supposed a new continent, 115 ; his suppositions compared 
with Isaiah's prophecies, 116. 

Strauss, his opinion that Christ was a myth, 232. 

Sufi'ering, implies superiority over senselessness, 131. 

Thuggism, 326; its extermination if advocated, justifies that of the 

Canaanites, 327. 
Time, no element of God, 136, 146-148. 
Trinity, belief in, upheld and explained, 201, 202. 

Unitarians (see Socinians), all Christians, 201 ; Jews and Mohammed- 
ans, 202 ; their absurdity of dividing the Godhead exhibited, 201. 

Unity of worship, among two hundred millions, 14. 

Universe, unconscious of its existence, 157 ; not man's, but God's, 159; 
Infidelity declares that man can direct its matter and properties, but 
God cannot, 159. 

Volney, his accounting for the recognition of a Messiah^ 125. 
Voltaire, had never read the New Testament, 321. 

War, causes of, must pre-exist in those engaged in it, 334. 

Wealth, the higher we ascend in the scale of creation, the weaker 
become the propensities gratified by it, 383 ; not one of the joys of 
heaven attainable by it, 383 ; servile respect for, debases the world 
and makes infidels, 415; Christianity protests against it, 415. 

Wife, the old Eoman, relative to her husband, morally as high as in 
modern Italy, 186. 

Woman, indebted for her restoration to Christ, 188. 



430 mDEx. 

Word, a, identically one with reason, mind, spirit, etc., 125. 

Word of God (see Aoyog), strange expression applied to a living person, 
125 ; God only an abstraction except through Him, 126 ; immense 
signification attached to the term by the Scriptures and the Church, 
126 ; used in the full Greek sense, 128 ; the cause why its predictions 
come to pass, 162, 167; the only "must be" of Christianity, 163 ; the 
will and power to create, 165: rejected by Newman, 171-173. 

Words, except as defining animal wants, must be derived from He- 
brew, Greek, and Latin, 130. 

Zoroaster, infidel plagiarism from, 836. 



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